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Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.

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
Right
Engagement
Many
Obligation
Connected
Merely
Neither
Duty
Trust
Matter

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Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by lifting his head high, can pretend that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down on him from above.
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The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.
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Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.
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Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.
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The wisdom of our ancestors.
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History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.
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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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In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
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Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.
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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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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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As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture they will find it in their natural--their destined occupation.
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Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
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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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A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.
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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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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
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Turn over a new leaf.
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The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.
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It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
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