C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Conservatism
A conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon, out of respect for that “ancient institution,” the old one.
The conservative may clamor against reform, but he might as well clamor against the centrifugal force. He sighs for the “good old times,”—he might as well wish the oak back into the acorn.
A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative; but when a nation’s young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung.
We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.
Conservatism is a very good thing; but how many conservatives announce principles which might have shocked Dick Turpin, or nonsensicalities flat enough to have raised contempt in Jerry Sneak!