Edmund Burke: “When a man is robbed of a trifle on the highway, it is not the twopence lost that constitutes the capital outrage.”

The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.

All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…

This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.

But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.