Edmund Burke Quotes (222 Quotes)


    Manners are of more importance than laws... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.

    In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed and the boldest staggered.

    People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

    Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficu.



    Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

    The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone.

    Never, no, never, did Nature say one thing and Wisdom say another.

    The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

    Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

    Next to love, sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart

    The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.

    And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

    It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.

    Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.

    The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded.


    I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.

    Through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection.

    The only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them.

    Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures.

    There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.


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