Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.

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

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.

There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.

London is a roost for every bird.

Nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

A new acquaintance is like a new book. I prefer it even if bad to a classic.

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.

Yes I am a Jew and when the ancestors of the right honourable gentlemen were brutal savages in an unknown land mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon.

The secret of success is constancy to purpose.

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.

The canter is a cure for every evil.

Departure should be sudden.

Ignorance never settles a question.

A sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.

Christianity is completed Judaism or it is nothing.

We are indeed a nation of shopkeepers.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

Courage is fire and bullying is smoke.

There is no index of character as sure as the voice.

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

Justice is truth in action.~ BENJAMIN DISRAELI, speech, Feb. 11, 1851

Be frank and explicit. That is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others.

I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments but not with comprehension.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

The English nation is never so great as in adversity.

Man is not the creature of circumstances Circumstances are the creatures of men.

Anybody amuses me for once. A new acquaintance is like a new book. I prefer it even if bad to a classic.

The delight of opening a new pursuit or a new course of reading imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.

Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you.

His Christianity was muscular.

The secret of success is constancy of purpose.

Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.

Demagogues and agitators are very unpleasant but they are incidents to a free and constitutional country and you must put up with these inconveniences or do without many important advantages.

Critics are the men who have failed in literature and art.

Little things affect little minds.

Luck is what a capricious man believes in.

I feel a very unusual sensation - if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.

The hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civi-lizers of man.

Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error.

He has not a single redeeming defect.

Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant.

Man is not the creature of circumstances circumstances are the creature of man. We are free agents and man is more powerful than matter.

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

Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.

The poor are very well off, at least the agricultural poor, very well off indeed. Their incomes are certain, that is a great point, and they have no cares, no anxieties; they always have a resource, they always have the House. People without cares do not require as much food as those whose life entails anxieties. See how long they live!

The secret to success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

Time is precious but truth is more precious than time.

Worry is 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 author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce.

Damn your principles! Stick to your party!

Like all great travellers I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

Read no history--nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.