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

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Hypocrisy is no cheap vice nor can our natural temper be masked for many years together.
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Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.
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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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If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
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Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.
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Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.
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Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.
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It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
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Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
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The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
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The wisdom of our ancestors.
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It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.
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I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
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As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.
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Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
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In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
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A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.
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The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power.
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