Quote

Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.

Edmund Burke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Instructor
Instructors
Severe
Adversity
Better

More quotes by Edmund Burke

Image
God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked.
Edmund Burke
Image
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.
Edmund Burke
Image
Man is by his constitution a religious animal atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.
Edmund Burke
Image
Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.
Edmund Burke
Image
Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
Edmund Burke
Image
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.
Edmund Burke
Image
He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
Edmund Burke
Image
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
Edmund Burke
Image
To execute laws is a royal office to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.
Edmund Burke
Image
For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever
Edmund Burke
Image
The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
Edmund Burke
Image
Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation.
Edmund Burke
Image
There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible the latter on small ones and pleasing we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other, we are flattered, into compliance.
Edmund Burke
Image
I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business , after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations .
Edmund Burke
Image
Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.
Edmund Burke
Image
If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
Edmund Burke
Image
We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us.
Edmund Burke
Image
Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity.
Edmund Burke
Image
I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
Edmund Burke
Image
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.
Edmund Burke