Quotes from Edmund Burke

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.

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength.

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

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.

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

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

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.

You can never plan the future by the past.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

The only thing needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.

Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

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

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

True humility--the basis of the Christian system--is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.