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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

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
Spirit
Something
Vigour
Pardon
Liberty

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Oppression makes wise men mad but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
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Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
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The only kind of sublimity which a painter or sculptor should aim at is to express by certain proportions and positions of limbs and features that strength and dignity of mind, and vigor and activity of body, which enables men to conceive and execute great actions.
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The superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
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Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
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If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
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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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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
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But a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition, to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.
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There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-protected pursuit.
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If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
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War is the matter which fills all history and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.
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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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Nothing is so rash as fear and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.
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Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.
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No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
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There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.
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Custom reconciles us to everything.
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