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I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.

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
Present
Performances
Pleasure
Despair
Contemptible
Felt
Degrees
Trifling
Ever
Regard
Regards
Judgment
Exalted
Childhood
Receiving
Genius
Romance
Pieces
Degree

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For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
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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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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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To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
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Responsibility prevents crimes.
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History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.
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All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.
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An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
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If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
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War is the matter which fills all history and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.
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Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise.
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Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because, of all enemies, it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource.
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Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
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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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It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
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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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Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
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Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
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