Edmund Burke

It was the monarchy that rendered France dangerous: Regicide neutralizes all the acrimony of that power, and renders it safe and social.

It is the return of the monarchy we are to dread, and therefore we ought to pray for the permanence of the Regicide authority.

It is to be confined within some bounds, if we can; if not, with every possible acquisition of power, it is still to be cherished and supported.

This republic, at all hazards, is to be maintained.

Permit me to say, that I am not yet well acquainted with this new-coined France, and without a careful assay I am not willing to receive it in currency in place of the old Louis-d'or.

Make your peace with France." That word France sounds quite as well as any other; and it conveys no idea but that of a very pleasant country and very hospitable inhabitants.

But by sleight of hand the Jacobins are clean vanished, and it is France we have got under our cup.

We have been in a grievous error: we thought that we had been at war with rebels against the lawful government, but that we were friends and allies of what is properly France, friends and allies to the legal body politic of France.

The great, general, pervading purpose, of the whole pamphlet is to reconcile us to peace with the present usurpation in France.

Examining it part by part, it seems almost everywhere to contradict itself; and the author, who claims the privilege of varying his opinions, has exercised this privilege in every section of his remarks.

His active Will-o'-the-wisp may be gone nobody can guess where, whilst he leaves us bemired and benighted in the bog.

His fugitive lights may serve himself in some unknown region, but they cannot free us from the effects of the error into which we have been betrayed.

There is a difference, too, between deliberation and doctrine: a man ought to be decided in his opinions before he attempts to teach.

We call for sentiments to which we can attach ourselves,--sentiments in which we can take an interest,--sentiments on which we can warm, on which we can ground some confidence in ourselves or in others.

We require some food that will stick to the ribs.

These ephemerides of politics are not made for our slow and coarse understandings.

This mutability is allowed to a foreign negotiator; but when a great politician condescends publicly to instruct his own countrymen on a matter which may fix their fate forever, his opinions ought not to be diurnal, or even weekly.

It is not good for us, however it may be so for great statesmen, that we should be treated with variable politics.

Even buildings run up in haste with untempered mortar in that humid weather, if they are ill-contrived tenements, do not threaten long to incumber the earth.

In truth, this work has a tendency to alarm us with symptoms of public suicide.

They write for youth, and it is sufficient, if the instruction "lasts as long as a present love, or as the painted silks and cottons of the season.

Writers value themselves now on the instability of their opinions and the transitory life of their productions.

If the writer who attacks another's notions does not deal fairly with his adversary, the diligent reader has it always in his power, by resorting to the work examined, to do justice to the original author and to himself.

There is, however, a sort of dialogue not quite so liable to these objections, because it approaches more nearly to truth and Nature: it is called CONTROVERSY.

This is my feeble, perhaps, but clear, positive, decided, long and maturely reflected and frequently declared opinion, from which all the events which have lately come to pass, so far from turning me, have tended to confirm beyond the…