Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
— Edmund Burke
In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
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.
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.
A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
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.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
Good order is the foundation of all things.
Beauty is the promise of happiness.
Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
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.
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
Falsehood is a perennial spring.
Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
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.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
