Isaac D'Israeli Quotes

Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause.

Quotations, like much better things, has its abuses.

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

All this is labour which never meets the eye.... But too open and generous a revelation of the chapter and the page of the original quoted, has often proved detrimental to the legitimate honours of the quoter. They are unfairly appropriated by the next comer; the quoter is never quoted, but the authority he has afforded is produced by his successor with the air of an original research.

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius.

The most noble criticism is that in which the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author.

The delights of reading impart the vivacity of youth even to old age.

Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.

Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonize.

Bayle, when writing on "Comets," discovered this; for having collected many things applicable to his work, as they stood quoted in some modern writers, when he came to compare them with their originals, he was surprised to find that they were nothing for his purpose! the originals conveyed a quite contrary sense to that of the pretended quoters, who often, from innocent blundering, and sometimes from purposed deception, had falsified their quotations. This is an useful story for second-hand authorities!

The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract. Whenever the mind of a writer is saturated with the full inspiration of a great author, a quotation gives completeness to the whole; it seals his feelings with undisputed authority.

Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on the side of genius. When education ends, genius often begins.

Every work of Genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the events of times.

Such do not always understand the authors whose names adorn their barren pages, and which are taken, too, from the third or the thirtieth hand. Those who trust to such false quoters will often learn how contrary this transmission is to the sense and application of the original. Every transplantation has altered the fruit of the tree; every new channel, the quality of the stream in its remove from the spring-head.

If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.

One may quote till one compiles.

A poet is a painter of the soul.

Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius.

Literary friendship is a sympathy not of manners, but of feelings.

The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

The greater part of our writers have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them: and those who never quote in return are seldom quoted.

A learned historian declared to me of a contemporary, that the latter had appropriated his researches; he might, indeed, and he had a right to refer to the same originals; but if his predecessor had opened the sources for him, gratitude is not a silent virtue.

Happy the man when he has not the defects of his qualities.

Those who never quote, in return are never quoted.

A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

A circle may be small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a large one.

The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory.

Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive family of genius.

Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear.

The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract.

An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age.

There is a society in the deepest solitude.

Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers.

The Self-Educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.

This is one of the results of that adventurous spirit which is now stalking forth and raging for its own innovations. We have not only rejected AUTHORITY, but have also cast away EXPERIENCE; and often the unburthened vessel is driving to all points of the compass, and the passengers no longer know whither they are going. The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by QUOTATION.

The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.

It is generally supposed that where there is no QUOTATION, there will be found most originality; and as people like to lay out their money according to their notions, our writers usually furnish their pages rapidly with the productions of their own soil: they run up a quickset hedge, or plant a poplar, and get trees and hedges of this fashion much faster than the former landlords procured their timber. The greater part of our writers, in consequence, have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them; and those who never quote, in return are never quoted!

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

There is an art of reading, an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.

The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves - the creature of habits and infirmities.

After all, it is style alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style.

The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius-the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, enthusiasm is the true part of genius.

Centuries have not worm-eaten the solidity of this ancient furniture of the mind.

A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the wit of other men; he searches where knowledge is to be found; and though he may not himself excel in invention, his ingenuity may compose one of those agreeable books, the deliciæ of literature, that will out-last the fading meteors of his day.