If we cry, like children, for the moon, like children we must cry on.
Edmund Burke: “If we cry, like children, for the moon, like children we must cry on.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke uses this metaphor to illustrate the futility of unrealistic desires.
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If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.
Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.
They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.
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