Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.
Edmund BurkeFalsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer.
Edmund BurkeGreater mischief happens often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.
Edmund BurkeIn the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.
Edmund Burke