Date: 1790
"This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and ...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in an hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembick of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed upon the minds of those who compose the collective sovereignty than upon those of single princes."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be acceptable, either in the act or the permission, to him whose essence is good, they will be better able to extirpate out of the minds of all magistrates, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, any thing that bears the least resemblance to a pro...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"Persuaded that all things ought to be done with reference, and referring all to the point of reference to which all should be directed, they think themselves bound, not only as individuals in the sanctuary of the heart, or as congregated in that personal capacity, to renew the m...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"They are not repelled through a fastidious delicacy, at the stench of their arrogance and presumption, from a medicinal attention to their mental blotches and running sores."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"Some charitable dole is wanting to these, our often very unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void which reigns in minds which have nothing on earth to hope or fear."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)