The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise isgone! it isgone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

-Burke, Edmund
  Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

-Burke, Edmund
  Reflections on the Revolution in France.

We can do worse than remember the principle which both gives us a firm Rock and leaves us the maximum elasticity for our mindsöHold to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted.

-Butterfield, Sir Herbert
  Christianity and History.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.

-Darwin, Charles Robert
  The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, ch.3.

I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please.

-Darwin, Charles Robert
  Letter to  J Fiske, 8 Dec.

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^3  Bleak House, ch.39.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Coningsby, bk.2, ch.5.

It is a commercial paper, a paper of business, and it is conducted on principles of trade and business. It floats with the tide: it sails with the stream. It has no other principle.

-Hazlitt,William
  Of  The Times. In the Edinburgh Review, May.

It takes up no falling cause; fights no uphill battle; advocatesnogreat principle; holdsout a helping hand to no oppressed or obscure individual. It is 'ever strong upon the stronger side'.

-Hazlitt,William
  Of  The Times. In the Edinburgh Review, May.

Political genius consists in identifying oneself with a principle.

-Heffer, Simon
Constitution of Germany.

On the principle laid down by Gilbert and Sullivan that when everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody; if everybody is abnormal, we don't need to worry about anybody.

-Hutchins, Robert M
  Farewell address to students at the University of Chicago.

Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.

-Krutch,JosephWood
  The Twelve Seasons,'February'.

To me the'female principle' is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power Lehmann-Haupt structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.

-Le Guin, Ursula ne¤  e Kroeber
'Is Gender Necessary?', in  Anderson and McIntyre (eds)  Aurora (1976).

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to producethe reverse of happiness.

-Mill,John Stuart
  Utilitarianism, ch.2.

DerTod ist das romantisierende Prinzip unsers Lebens. DerTod istödas Leben. Durch denTod wird das Leben verst a« rkt. Death is the romantic principle of Life. Death isölife. Through death life is intensified.

-Novalis pseudonym of  Friedrich von Hardenberg
  Schriften, II, Fragmente.

Labour is the Father and active principle of Wealth, as lands are the Mother.

-Petty, Sir William
  Treatise ofTaxes.

'Form follows profit' is the aesthetic principle of our times. Thus, design skill is measured today by the architect's ability to build the largest possible enclosure for the smallest investment in the quickest time.

-Rogers, Richard George Rogers, Baron
  22nd annualWalter Neurath lecture. Collected in Architecture: a ModernView.

L'homme n'est rien d'autre que ce qu'il se fait.Tel est le premier principe de l'existentialisme. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

-Sartre,Jean-Paul
  L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism and Humanism,1948) (translated by Philip Mairet).

Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing, sir.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  Waiter to Fergus Crampton.You Never CanTell, act 2.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supportshiskingon loyal principles and cuts off hishead on republican principles.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  The Man of Destiny.