Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable.

Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally create ourselves.

England is unrivalled for two things - sport and politics.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

An obedient wife commands her husband.

I am neither a Whig nor Tory. My politics are described in one word and that word is England.

No, it is better not. She will only ask me to take a message to Albert.

If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.

Difficulties melt away under tact.

Accent and emphasis are the pith of reading; punctuation is but secondary.

Worry - a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.

Without tact you can learn nothing. Tact teaches you when to be silent. Inquirers who are always questioning never learn anything.

Conservatism... offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Ah, Ireland... That damnable, delightful country, where everything that is right is the opposite of what it ought to be.

The first favourite was never heard of, the second favourite was never seen after the distance post, all the ten-to-oners were in the rear, and a dark horse which had never been thought of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grand stand in sweeping triumph.

All my successes have been built on my failures.

Enthusiasm is the breath of genius.

Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary error is often more earnest than truth.

"As for that," said Waldenshare, "sensible men are all of the same religion." "Pray, what is that?" inquired the Prince. "Sensible men never tell."

What is wanted in architecture, as in so many things, is a man. ... One suggestion might be made-no profession in England has done its duty until it has furnished a victim. ... Even our boasted navy never achieved a great victory until we shot an admiral. Suppose an architect were hanged? Terror has its inspiration, as well as competition.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

A parsimony of words prodigal of sense.

I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.

If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.

Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels.

A Protestant, if he wants aid or advice on any matter, can only go to his solicitor.

Having the courage to live within one's means is respectability.

The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.

Religion is civilization, the highest.

The secret of success is constancy to purpose.

Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honors or of wealth.

Why should one say that the machine does not live? It breathes, for its breath forms the atmosphere of some towns.

Generally speaking, among sensible persons, it would seem that a rich man deems that friend a sincere one who does not want to borrow his money; while, among the less favored with fortune's gifts, the sincere friend is generally esteemed to be the individual who is ready to lend it.

Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest.

The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.

Duty cannot exist without faith

The age does not believe in great men, because it does not possess any.

The right hon. Gentleman [Sir Robert Peel] caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes.

No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.

Rothschild is the lord and master of the money markerts of the world and virtually lord and master of everything else.

With words we govern men.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.