Edmund Burke Quotes About Language

Quotes about: Language

• I find along with many virtues in my countrymen there is a jealousy, a soreness, and readiness to take offence, as if they were the most helpless and impotent of mankind, and yet a violence... and a boistrousness in their resentment, as if they had been puffed up with the highest prosperity and power. they will not only be served, but it must also be in their own way and on their own principles and even in words and language that they liked... which renders it very difficult for a plain unguarded man as I am to have anything to do with them or their affairs.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, History, Way

• The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power.

  Edmund Burke

  Exercise, Names, Agitation

• In general the languages of most unpolished people have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.

  Edmund Burke

  Expression, People, Energy

  Edmund Burke (1824). “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, p.188

• It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength.

  Edmund Burke

  May, Language, Clearness

  Edmund Burke (1824). “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, p.187

• Sallust is indisputably one of the best historians among the Romans, both for the purity of his language and the elegance of his style.

  Edmund Burke

  Style, Language, Purity

  Edmund Burke, Arthur P.I. Samuels (2014). “The Early Life Correspondence and Writings of The Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke”, p.129, CUP Archive

• To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

  Edmund Burke

  Language, Speak, Virtue

  Attributed in "Captain William Kidd: And Others of the Pirates Or Buccaneers who Ravaged the Seas, the Islands, and the Continents of America Two Hundred Years Ago" by John Stevens Cabot Abbott, (p. 179), 1876.

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