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Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded.

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
Power
Precautions
May
Amiss
Take
Dreaded
Must
Precaution
Much
Dread
Fairly
Ambition
Among

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Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.
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When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment, we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer.
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Knowledge of those unalterable Relations which Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other...To these we should conform in good Earnest and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our artificial Regulations.
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Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.
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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.
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Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
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No men can act with effect who do not act in concert no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence no men can act with confidence who are not bound together with common opinions, common affections, and common interests.
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Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
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Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies.
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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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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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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 .
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
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Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
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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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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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If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
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To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes.
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Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
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Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.
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