Quote

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
Importance
Courtesy
Debase
Laws
Uniforms
Vex
Constant
Corrupt
Exalt
Air
Operation
Soothe
Law
Steady
Refine
Like
Operations
Insensible
Manners
Purify
Breathe
Uniform

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The only training for the heroic is the mundane.
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A great empire and little minds go ill together.
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As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture they will find it in their natural--their destined occupation.
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But whoever is a genuine follower of Truth, keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader.
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The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.
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Man is an animal that cooks his victuals.
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Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation.
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To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
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The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.
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An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
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Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.
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I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.
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The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success.
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Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
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Corrupt influence is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder it loads us more than millions of debt takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.
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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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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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Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all it combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights but not to equal things.
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They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
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