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There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.

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
Inactivity
Imply
Despair
Circumstances
Doe

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Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
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It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
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The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibilit y for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires
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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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The superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
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Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
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Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
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I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.
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Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.
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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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In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations.
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The only kind of sublimity which a painter or sculptor should aim at is to express by certain proportions and positions of limbs and features that strength and dignity of mind, and vigor and activity of body, which enables men to conceive and execute great actions.
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Custom reconciles us to everything.
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Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.
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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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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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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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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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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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No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
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