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It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength.

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
May
Polished
Observed
Languages
Superior
Superiors
Generally
Deficient
Strength
Clearness
Language
Praised

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Public calamity is a mighty leveller.
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The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
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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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To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.
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There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.
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The only training for the heroic is the mundane.
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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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I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
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All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.
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Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
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No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
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Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole where, not local purpose, not local prejudices ought to guide but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.
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One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
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Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science a partnership in all art a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
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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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The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
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Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
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Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.
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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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