no one generation could link with the other; men would become little better than the flies of a summer.
 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). copy citation

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Author Edmund Burke
Source Reflections on the Revolution in France
Topic summer link
Date 1790
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15679/15679-h/15679-h.htm#REFLECTIONS

Context

“By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often and as much and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken; no one generation could link with the other; men would become little better than the flies of a summer. And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the human intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, and errors, is the collected reason of ages, combining the principles of original justice with the infinite variety of human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors, would be no longer studied.” source