The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: With a Portrait, and Life of the Author, Volume 1

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T. M'Lean, 1823 - Great Britain

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Page xl - 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.
Page 165 - The other shape, If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd, For each seem'd either ; black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, And shook a dreadful dart ; what seem'd his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Page 168 - 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.
Page xl - ... My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours without question ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination ; and what sort of reason is that in which the determination precedes the discussion ; in which one set of men deliberate and another decide ; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred...
Page 253 - 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 170 - 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: It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice...
Page lxxxiii - His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters, his social virtues in all the relations, and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow. "Hail! and farewell...
Page xxix - I venture to say, it did so happen, that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoke to each other in their lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed.
Page 192 - Glittering in golden coats, like images, As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer, Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
Page 323 - O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, A universe of death ; which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good ; Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.

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