Edmund Burke

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

The greatest sin is to do nothing because you can only do a little.

Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.

Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.

The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.

Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.

He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself.

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.

To reach the height of our ambition is like trying to reach the rainbow; as we advance it recedes.

Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.

By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.

Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom.

Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

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

In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.

Next to love, Sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.

There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.