661 Quotes by Edmund Burke

The perfection of conversation is not to play a regular sonata, but, like the AEolian harp, to await the inspiration of the passing breeze.

The ocean is an object of no small terror.

Laws are commanded to hold their tongues among arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

The superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.

Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy.

A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.

The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.