The Works of Edmund Burke, Volume 4C. C. Little & J. Brown, 1839 - Great Britain |
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alliance allies ambition amongst ancient appear assembly assignats Austria Austrian Netherlands authority body Brissot Britain called cause conduct consider constitution court crown danger declaration destroy disposition dreadful duke of Bedford Duke of Portland effect enemy England Europe evil exist faction favor force foreign France French friends give grace Holland honor hope house of commons human interest jacobin jacobin clubs justice king king of Prussia kingdom labor liberty Lord Lord Keppel Louis the Fourteenth majesty manner massacre matter means ment merit mind ministers mode monarchy moral murder nation nature negotiation never nobility object opinion Paris parliament party peace persons political present princes principles proceedings Prussia reason regard regicide religion republic revolution ruin sans-culottes shew sort sovereign Spain spirit suffer thing tion treaty treaty of Westphalia virtue whilst whole wholly wish
Popular passages
Page 46 - If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men 'will be fitted to it ; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope will forward it ; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate.
Page 322 - But commonwealths are not physical but moral essences. They are, artificial combinations ; and in their proximate efficient cause, the arbitrary productions of the human mind. We are not yet acquainted with the laws which necessarily influence the stability of that kind of work made by that kind of agent.
Page 7 - The writers of these papers, indeed, for the greater part, are either unknown or in contempt, but they are like a battery, in which the stroke of any one ball produces no great effect, but the amount of continual repetition is decisive. Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelvemonth, and he will become our master.
Page 301 - ... would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry He had in himself a salient, living spring, of generous and manly action.
Page 280 - I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North. He was a man of admirable parts; of general knowledge ; of a versatile understanding fitted for every sort of business ; of infinite wit and pleasantry ; of a delightful temper ; and with a mind most perfectly disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honour the memory of a great man, to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and spirit of command, that the time required.
Page 274 - Why will they not let me remain in obscurity and inaction ? Are they apprehensive, that if an atom of me remains, the sect has something to fear? Must I be annihilated, lest, like old John Zisca's, my skin might be made into a drum, to animate Europe to eternal battle, against a tyranny that threatens to overwhelm all Europe, and all the human race ? My lord, it is a subject of awful meditation.
Page 301 - I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbors of his, who visited his dunghill, to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to...
Page 378 - The calculation of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity ; the rest is crime.
Page 302 - I live in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. They who should have been to me as posterity are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever must subsist in memory) that act of piety, which he would have performed to me ; I owe it to him to shew that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent.
Page 461 - Never, no, never did nature say one thing and wisdom say another. Nor are sentiments of elevation in themselves turgid and unnatural. Nature is never more truly herself, than in her grandest forms. The Apollo of Belvedere (if the universal robber has yet left him at Belvedere) iffi' as much in nature, as any figure from the pencil of Rembrandt, or any clown in the rustic revels of Teniers.