661 Quotes by Edmund Burke

Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.

Where mystery begins religion ends.

The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power.

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray, to not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

Those who attempt to level never equalize

There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.

Evil succeeds when good men do nothing

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