Political Quotes

Edmund Burke: Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady…

On the record
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.
Said by
Edmund Burke

Editor's note · Context

Burke discusses the pervasive impact of manners on human behavior and society.

Share

More from Edmund Burke

Jan 1, 1790

They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…

gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1790

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.

gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1790

The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.

gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1790

If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.

gutenberg.org

Other voices in this conversation