Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

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

He thinks posterity is a pack-horse, always ready to be loaded.

One should conquer the world, not to enthrone a man, but an idea; for ideas exist forever.

Of all unfortunate men one of the unhappiest is a middling author endowed with too lively a sensibility for criticism.

The stage is a supplement to the pulpit, where virtue, according to Plato's sublime idea, moves our love and affection when made visible to the eye.

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

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.

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

The messenger from the Republics of the West now prostrated himself before the Statue. He informed it that two parties had, unfortunately, broken out in these countries, and threatened their speedy dissolution; that one party maintained that all human government originated in the wants of man; while the other party asserted that it originated in the desires of man. That these factions had become so violent and so universal that public business was altogether stopped,

As a rule, man is a fool. When it's hot, he wants it cool; When its cool, he wants it hot. Always wanting, what is not.

Popular privileges are consistent with a state of society in which there is great inequality of position. Democratic rights, on the contrary, demand that there should be equality of condition as the fundamental basis of the society they regulate.

The English nation is never so great as in adversity.

To achieve what you want, you have to be stronger than those around you

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.

Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.

You asked me where I generally lived. In my workshop [i.e. in his study] in the mornings and always in the library in the evening. Books are companions even if you don't open them.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

Destiny bears us to our lot, and destiny is perhaps our own will.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Man is made to create, from the poet to the potter.

All my successes have been built on my failures.

There is no gambling like politics.

Our domestic affections are the most salutary basis of all good government.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

There are some silent people who are more interesting than the best talkers.

I was told that the privileged and the people formed two nations.

London is a roost for every bird.

A practical man is a man who practices the errors of his forefathers.

You know, all is development. The principle is perpetually going on. First, there was nothing, then there was something; then-I forget the next-I think there were shells, then fishes; then we came-let me see-did we come next? Never mind that; we came at last. And at the next change there will be something very superior to us-something with wings. Ah! That's it: we were fishes, and I believe we shall be crows.

Women carry a beautiful hand with them to the grave, when a beautiful face has long ago vanished.

Generally speaking, all the great events have been distorted, most of the important causes concealed, some of the principal characters never appear, and all who figure are so misunderstood and misrepresented, that the result is a complete mystification, and the perusal of the narrative about as profitable as reading the Republic of Plato or the Utopia if More.

I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible.

You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and therefore when gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at the scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which, I hope, will keep it great.

England is a domestic country. Here the home is revered and the hearth sacred. The nation is represented by a family,
the Royal family,
and if that family is educated with a sense of responsibility and a sentiment of public duty, it is difficult to exaggerate the salutary influence it may exercise over a nation.

Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions.

Extreme views are never just; something always turns up which disturbs the calculations formed upon their data.

But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.

Meditation is culture.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Friendship is the gift of the gods, and the most precious boon to man.

The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies ; but it
sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.

Customs may not be as wise as laws, but they are always more popular.

That earliest shock in one's life which occurs to all of us; which first makes us think.

Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

Coalitions though successful have always found this, that their triumph has been brief.

The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.

Here's to the man who rode the race, who took the time, who kept the time, and who did the trick.

What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history

Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.

It is easier to be critical than correct.

When men are young, they want experience and when they have gained experience, they want energy.

It has been said that the people of this country are deeply interested in the humanitarian and philanthropic considerations involved in [the Eastern Question]. All must appreciate such feelings. But I am mistaken if there be not a yet deeper sentiment on the part of the people of this country, one with which I cannot doubt your lordships will ever sympathise, and that is - the determination to maintain the Empire of England.

There is anguish in the recollection that we have not adequately appreciated the affection of those whom we have loved and lost.

An obedient wife commands her husband.

Everything in this world depends upon will.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

A book may be as great a thing as a battle.

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

We make our fortunes and we call them fate.

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.

The constitution of England is not a paper constitution. It is an aggregate of institutions, many of them founded merely upon prescription, some of them fortified by muniments, but all of them the fruit and experience of an ancient and illustrious people.

Governments do not govern, but merely control the machinery of government, being themselves controlled by the hidden hand.

It is the fashion to style the present moment an extraordinary crisis.

The world is a wheel, and it will all come round right.

Without dancing you can never attain a perfectly graceful carriage, which is of the highest importance in life.

What we call public opinion is generally public sentiment.

Nine-tenths of all existing books are nonsense.

Change is as inexorable as time, yet nothing meets with more resistance.

Great revolutions, whatever may be their causes, are not lightly commenced, and are not concluded with precipitation.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

A beautiful hand is an excellent thing in woman; it is a charm that never palls; and better than all, it is a means of fascinating that never disappears.

Happiness is only to be found in a recurrence to the principles of human nature; and these will prompt very simple measures.

As a rule, he or she who has the most information will have the greatest success in life.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur.

London is a modern Babylon.

He was one of these men who think that the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet.

She is an excellent creature, but she can never remember which came first, the Greeks or the Romans.

All power is a trust, that we are accountable for its exercise.

The world is governed by personalities very different to what people
that cannot see further than their eyes, believe

Modern science has vindicated the natural equality of man.

Debt is a prolific mother of folly and of crime.

In the hands of a genius, engineering turns to magic, philosophy becomes poetry, and science pure imagination.

There can be no economy where there is no efficiency.

We are taught words, not ideas.

Whenever you see a man who is successful in society, try to discover what makes him pleasing, and if possible adopt his system.

A great person is one who affects the mind of their generation.

Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.

We cannot learn men from books.

There is a thread in our thoughts as there is a pulse in our feelings; he who can hold the one knows how to think, and he who can move the other knows how to feel.

The art of conversation is to be prompt without being stubborn, to refute without argument, and to clothe great matters in a motley garb.

I do not understand how an aristocracy can exist, unless it be distinguished by some quality which no other class of the community possesses.

The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.

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

Next to the assumption of power is the responsibility of relinquishing it.

The Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.

As a general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it.

Christianity is completed Judaism or it is nothing.