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I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

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
Advantage
Decline
Objects
Efforts
Personal
Remarkable
Effort
Proportion
Ever
Pursuit
Sanguine
Never
Active
Advantages
Life
Election
Bold
Rule
Observe

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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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Responsibility prevents crimes.
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Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.
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Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.
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Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom.
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The ocean is an object of no small terror.
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He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior standing he unites with.
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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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Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.
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Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.
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Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
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One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
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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.
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The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
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Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
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The only training for the heroic is the mundane.
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Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
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