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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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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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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
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The individual is foolish the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.
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Contempt is not a thing to be despised.
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They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
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It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.
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It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
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Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
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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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Hypocrisy is no cheap vice nor can our natural temper be masked for many years together.
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Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
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Oppression makes wise men mad but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
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The only training for the heroic is the mundane.
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Man is an animal that cooks his victuals.
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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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No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
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Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
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