“He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.”
Author
Edmund Burke
46 quotes
More from Edmund Burke
“Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.”
“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”
“If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.”
“There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.”
“To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.”
“There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.”
“It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.”
“Our patience will achieve more than our force.”
“Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.”
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”
“All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory they have no power over the substance of original justice.”
“Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.”
“Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.”
“Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.”
“Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.”
“The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him he indulges it, he loves it but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.”
“I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.”
“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”
“Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.”
“People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.”