Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.
Edmund BurkeAs the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcastโalternately tempestuous and sereneโso is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.
Edmund BurkeThe unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!
Edmund BurkeObstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues--constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness--are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence; and in their excess all these virtues very easily fall into it.
Edmund BurkeMan acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.
Edmund Burke