You know, and you will forgive me again remarking, that it is the nature of the eagles and more generous birds of prey to fall upon living, healthy victims, but that vultures and carrion crows, and birds of that base and degenerate kind, always prey upon dead or dying carcases.
Edmund Burke: “You know, and you will forgive me again remarking, that it is the nature of the eagles and more generous birds of prey…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke uses a metaphor to illustrate the predatory nature of certain individuals compared to noble creatures.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.
But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.





