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

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
Better
Instructor
Instructors
Severe
Adversity

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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.
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Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.
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An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?
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People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
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Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
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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.
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The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them.
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True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
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When you find me attempting to break into your house to take your plate, under any pretence whatsoever, but most of all under pretence of purity of religion and Christian charity shoot me for a robber and a hypocrite, as in that case I shall certainly be.
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All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is good men doing nothing.
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Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.
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It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
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The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him he indulges it, he loves it but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
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A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
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Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.
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Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.
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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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Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
Edmund Burke