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Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe.

Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Corrupt
Exalt
Constant
Operation
Soothe
Air
Steady
Refine
Law
Operations
Insensible
Like
Manners
Purify
Breathe
Uniform
Importance
Courtesy
Debase
Uniforms
Vex
Laws

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Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
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Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever
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Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.
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Next to love, Sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.
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An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
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Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
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The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.
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It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.
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It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.
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Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because, of all enemies, it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource.
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Responsibility prevents crimes.
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The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibilit y for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires
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Guilt was never a rational thing it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.
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What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.
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The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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The individual is foolish the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.
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Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.
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Liberty, without wisdom, is license.
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