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

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The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality.
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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.
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Hypocrisy is no cheap vice nor can our natural temper be masked for many years together.
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Continue to instruct the world and - whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own - convey wisdom to future generations.
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Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
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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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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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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
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This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.
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There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.
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He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.
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Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue.
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But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
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The wisdom of our ancestors.
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Freedom without virtue is not freedom but license to pursue whatever passions prevail in the intemperate mind man's right to freedom being in exact proportion to his willingness to put chains upon his own appetites the less restraint from within, the more must be imposed from 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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Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.
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An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
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Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
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Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
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