Source: Interview by Jonathan Robinson (1994), p. 163.
“Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.”
Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 117
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)
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Edmund Burke 270
Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797Related quotes
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 135.
Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, 10 Sept. 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 605), p. 26
1880s, 1889
Noah Brooks, scribe for the Sacramento Union, writing in the Harper’s Weekly for July 1865, 3 months after Lincoln had died, reported that the Lincoln once said this, at an unspecified date; as reported in "Did Abraham Lincoln Actually Say That Obama Quote?" by James M. Cornelius, The Daily Beast (9 August 2012) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/08/did-abraham-lincoln-actually-say-that-obama-quote.html
Posthumous attributions
The Race of My Life: An Autobiography Milkha Singh (2013)
“When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body.”
Source: The Last Olympian