Quote

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.

Edmund Burke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Beauty
Possible
Proportions
Though
Ugliness
Perfect
Fitness
Use
Proportion
May
Opposite
Thing
Opposites
Ugly

More quotes by Edmund Burke

Image
The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another.
Edmund Burke
Image
A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
Edmund Burke
Image
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.
Edmund Burke
Image
Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.
Edmund Burke
Image
Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica.
Edmund Burke
Image
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.
Edmund Burke
Image
The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men to each govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience.
Edmund Burke
Image
Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.
Edmund Burke
Image
Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
Edmund Burke
Image
Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
Edmund Burke
Image
The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement.
Edmund Burke
Image
Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
Edmund Burke
Image
Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
Edmund Burke
Image
Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
Edmund Burke
Image
It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.
Edmund Burke
Image
The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success.
Edmund Burke
Image
No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
Edmund Burke
Image
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.
Edmund Burke
Image
Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind.
Edmund Burke
Image
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke