ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS	59
The Moving Finger Writes
r-pHE moving finger writes ; and, having writ*
JL   Moves on : nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
From Omar Khayydm
The Wish of Edmund Burke
Standing in a little garden in Bristol, Edmund Burke says,
•r wish to be a member of Parliament to have my share of doing
JL good and resisting evil.
Edmund Burke on John Howard
H
is plan is original, and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity.
He has visited all Europe, not to survey the sumptuousness
of palaces or the stateliness of temples ; not to make accurate
measurements of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the
curiosities of modern art; not to collect medals or to collate manu-
scripts ; but to dive into the depth of dungeons, to plunge into the
infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain ;
to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and con-
tempt ; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to
visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of men
in all countries.
The Tyranny of Democracy
o
f this I am certain, that in a democracy the majority of the
citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon
the minority, and that the oppression of the minority will extend to
far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury,
than ever from the dominion of a single sceptre.  Edmund Burke
The Only Way
I
 am aware that the age is not what we all wish, but I am sure that
the only means to check its degeneracy is heartily to concur in
whatever is best in our time.	Edmund Burke
Do Not Be Deceived by the Great Noise
b
ecause half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring
with their importunate chink, while thousands of great cattle,
reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and
are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are
the only inhabitants of the field, that of course they are many in
number, or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled,
meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.
Edmund Burke