Philosophers From Ireland

"Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer."

"There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination."

"So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated publick good which ever has been conferred on mankind."

"Their principles always go to the extreme. They who go with the principles of the ancient Whigs, which are those contained in Mr. Burke's book, never can go too far. ... The opinions maintained in that book never can lead to an extreme, because their foundation is laid in an opposition to extremes."

"We want no foreign examples to rekindle in us the flame of liberty. The example of our own ancestors is abundantly sufficient to maintain the spirit of freedom in its full vigour, and to qualify it in all its exertions. The example of a wise, moral, well-natured, and well-tempered spirit of freedom, is that alone which can be useful to us, or in the least degree reputable or safe. Our fabric is so constituted; one part of it bears so much on the other, the parts, are so made for one another, and for nothing else, that to introduce any foreign matter into it, is to destroy it."

"The Whigs of this day have before them, in this Appeal, their constitutional ancestors: They have the doctors of the modern school. They will choose for themselves. The author of the Reflections has chosen for himself. If a new order is coming on, and all the political opinions must pass away as dreams, which our ancestors have worshipped as revelations, I say for him, that he would rather be the last (as certainly he is the least) of that race of men, than the first and greatest of those who have coined to themselves Whig principles from a French die, unknown to the impress of our fathers in the constitution."

"Free trade is not based on utility but on justice."

"And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them."

"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."

"It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform."

"But as to our country and our race, as long as the well compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion—as long as the British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land—so long as the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France."

"Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy."

"Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment."

"A great revolution is on the point of being accomplished. It is a revolution not in human affairs, but in man himself."

"We have an enemy, to whose virtues we can owe nothing; but on this occasion we are infinitely obliged to one of his vices. We owe more to his insolence than to our own precaution."

"...out of the tomb of the murdered Monarchy in France, has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man."

"They who bow to the enemy abroad will not be of power to subdue the conspirator at home."

"We are at war with a system, which, by it's essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by it's essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. To us it is a Colossus which bestrides our channel. It has one foot on a foreign shore, the other upon the British soil. Thus advantaged, if it can at all exist, it must finally prevail."

"...they who would make peace without a previous knowledge of the terms, make a surrender. They are conquered. They do not treat; they receive the law. Is this the disposition of the people of England? Then the people of England are contented to seek in the kindness of a foreign systematick enemy combined with a dangerous faction at home, a security which they cannot find in their own patriotism and their own courage. They are willing to trust to the sympathy of Regicides the guarantee of the British Monarchy. They are content to rest their religion on the piety of atheists by establishment. They are satisfied to seek in the clemency of practised murderers the security of their lives. They are pleased to confide their property to the safeguard of those who are robbers by inclination, interest, habit, and system. If this be our deliberate mind, truly we deserve to lose, what it is impossible we should long retain, the name of a nation."

"All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities."

"Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."

"If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed."

"All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth."

"Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property."

"We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation."

"Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in."

"Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar."

"Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an œconomy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer."

"I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tombs of the Capulets."

"The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny."

"A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words."

"When Croft's "Life of Dr. Young" was spoken of as a good imitation of Dr. Johnson's style, "No, no," said he, "it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration.""

"The art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing."

"To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue."

"There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world."

"They talk as if England were not in Europe."

"Partial freedom seems to me the most invidious form of slavery."

"Whether they are allowed to be Whigg principles, or not, is a very small part of my concern. I think them exactly as such as the sober, honourable, and intelligent part in that party, have always professed. I think, I have shewn, beyond a possibility of debate, that they are exactly the same. But if any person...choose to think otherwise, and conceive that they are contrary to the Doctrines of their Whigg party,—be it so. I am certain, that they are principles of which no reasonable man or good citizen need be ashamed of. If they are Tory principles, I shall always wish to be thought a Tory, If the contrary of these principles be Whigg principles, I beg, that you, my Dear Friend will never consider me as belonging to that description."

"That since England had the principle, of making Peace with Anarchists she has left herself without a cause—that it is high time for all honest men to think no more of Party—that this Kingdom is in a most perillous State, & nothing but vigour can save it—that peace can not be secure in the present State of Things in France—that nothing was ever more regular nor systematical than the attempts there to conquer all Europe—that the Spirit of their Ambition is Atheistical, & our people should know this."

"[Men of property are] of great consequence to general society; they have much responsibility, being a natural part of Legislature—their voices must be heard, their Interests are with the Public. Commerce increases Luxury, and Merchants support the State; but Kings, Nobles, and Gentry, are nothing without possessions."

"When some gentlemen of landed Property argued in favour of that Man's Works, and the rage for Democracy first broke out, Mr. Burke said, it reminded him of living in the happy Kingdom of Cocogne w[h]ere Fowls ready roasted cried out "Come eat me"."

"Mr. Burke appeared often in despair when he read the Papers & saw how violent party rage was become in England as well as in France. He often said that he could not consider the party for a reform in part by Mr. Fox & his Friends as distinct from that party of Sir F. Burdet at the Crown & Anchor, because Mr. F— though he might have spoken against the last out of Doors, did not condemn it in parliam[en]t, which would be the manly way of proceeding."

"Always steady in the rejection of a Reform of Parliam[en]t which proved the best sense, & better than some sense they were deficient in at Times."

"That it was common to observe that this was an enlightened Age; but he had thought it for a long time past an ignorant Age. Would you, said he, call a Circulating Library a good Library, because it contains so many books? This Age is much advanced in many useless sciences, & much more respect is shewn to Talent than to wisdom; but I consider our fore-fathers as deeper Thinkers than ourselves, because they set an higher Value on good sense than Knowledge in various Sciences, & this good sense was derived very often from as much study & more knowledge, though of another sort."

"Too dangerous an experiment to risque. Not any reform proposed yet that did not appear to him highly hazardous. The least exceptionable that of Lord Chatham's "adding fifty Knights of the shire": but this, as well as the rest already proposed, not to be thought upon in such times as these, or perhaps, ever."

"Mr. Burke's Enemies often endeavoured to convince the World that he had been bred up in the Catholic Faith, & that his Family were of it, & that he himself had been educated at St. Omer—but this was false, as his father was a regular practitioner of the Law at Dublin, which he could not be unless of the Established Church: & it so happened that though Mr. B— was twice at Paris, he never happened to go through the Town of St. Omer."

"Habit & Experience should teach all persons their place in Society—a Levelling Principle should be discouraged both with respect to rank, & Superiority of every Kind."

"Are chiefly cherished in Provinces far from Capitals. They are the standing Wisdom of a Country, though frequently Preposterous on a first view of them."

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

"Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones."