The discovery of vehement wishes generally frustrates their attainment, and your adversary has gained a great advantage over you when he finds you impatient to conclude a treaty.
Edmund Burke: “The discovery of vehement wishes generally frustrates their attainment, and your adversary has gained a great advantage…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke argues that showing too much eagerness in negotiations can undermine one's position.
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Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
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.
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.





