So that men like Robespierre were asking from their subjects an impossible task.

That which they had conceived in the gray abstractness of their speculations was too little related to what the average Frenchman knew and desired to be enduring.

Burke looks with sober admiration at the way in which the English revolution related itself at every point to ideas and theories with which the average man was as familiar as with the physical landmarks of his own neighborhood.

For the motives which underlie all human effort are, he thought, sufficiently constant to compel regard.
That upon which they feed submits to change; but the effort is slow and the disappointments many.

The Revolution taught the populace the thirst for power.