Edmund Burke Quotes

Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is that which we perceive as a value.

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

Being good or evil has nothing to do with religion.

Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.

Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.

He, who practices right, but in the hope of acquiring great renown, is very near to vice.

Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.

The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.

Pride is both a virtue and a vice.

The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.

Vice is a dreary business. And virtue is not a lot of fun, either.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.

Goodness is equally hateful to the wicked, as vice is to the virtuous.

Virtue may not always make a Face handsome, but Vice will certainly make it ugly.

There has never been a man mean and at the same time virtuous.

But virtue too, as well as vice, is clad in flesh and blood.

Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly.

There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

Pleasure itself is not a vice

Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves.

You can cultivate taste, as you can the intellect. Full understanding whets the appetite and desire, and, later, sharpens the enjoyment of possession.

The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one's virtues.