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“It shews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Referring to the Glorious Revolution of 1688
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in—glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a Revolution! And what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 331
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, — and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.”

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity — the law of nature, and of nations.”

28 May 1794
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)

“Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.”

Speech on the Independence of Parliament (1780)

“A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.”

Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 117
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.”

Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election http://books.google.com/books?id=DAAUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA435&dq=%22we+are+generally+cold,+and+languid,+and+sluggish%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D4TSUuXqDYrekQe6uoH4Cw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22we%20are%20generally%20cold%2C%20and%20languid%2C%20and%20sluggish%22&f=false (6 September 1780) <br class="br">1780s

“Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.”

No. 1
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

“There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.”

15 February 1788, Third Day, volume x, p. 54
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)

“It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform.”

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Noble Lord

Source: A Letter to a Noble Lord (1796), p. 20

“You can never plan the future by the past.”

Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)
A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

“I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tombs of the Capulets.”

Letter to Matthew Smith
Undated

“It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.”

Edmund Burke book Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

“The march of the human mind is slow.”

Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 149
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.”

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“Mr. Burke talked in very high terms of Dr. Adam Smith; praised the clearness and depth of his understanding, his profound and extensive learning, and the vast accession that had accrued to British literature and philosophy from these exertions, and described his heart as being equally good with his head and his manners as peculiarly pleasing. Mr. Smith, he said, told him, after they had conversed on subjects of political economy, that he was the only man, who, without communication, thought on these topics exactly as he did.”

Robert Bisset, The Life of Edmund Burke. Volume II (London: G. Cawthorn, 1800), pp. 428-9
Undated

“Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire.”

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Falsehood has a perennial spring.”

First Speech on the Conciliation with America (1774)

“Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)