Selections of Edmund Burke

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P. F. Collier & son, 1909 - 443 pages
contains: On Taste On the Sublime and Beautiful Reflections on the French Revolution A Letter to a Noble Lord
 

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Page 216 - 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.
Page 216 - ... 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.
Page 54 - In thoughts from the visions of the night, When deep sleep falleth on men, Fear came upon me, and trembling, Which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face ; The hair of my flesh stood up...
Page 104 - And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony: That Orpheus...
Page 53 - Their dread commander : he, above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent, Stood like a tower : his form had yet not lost All her original brightness ; nor appeared Less than arch-angel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured...
Page 229 - Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders' a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.
Page 227 - Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
Page 170 - An Act for the further Limitation of the Crown, and better securing the Rights and Liberties of the Subject...
Page 164 - A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Page 53 - Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured ; as when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.

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