On the record
If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain.
Said by
Edmund Burke
Source
gutenberg.orgIf he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain.
Burke characterizes a person's ambition as noble and generous, contrasting it with less honorable pursuits.
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A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.