Top 564 Quotes & Sayings by Benjamin Disraeli - Page 6

What art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern; the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men, the useful has succeeded to the beautiful.

You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which the Jews do NOT greatly participate. The first Jesuits were Jews.

A dark horse, which had never been thought of, rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph.

It is the lot of man to suffer; it is also his fortune to forget. Oblivion and sorrow share our being, as darkness and light divide the course of time.

Silence often expresses 'more powerfully than speech the verdict and judgment of society.

The Continent will not suffer England to be the workshop of the world.

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.

A canter is the cure for all evil.

I believe absence is a great element of charm.

The praise of a fool is incense to the wisest of us . . .

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

News is that which comes from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point on the compass, then it is a class; publication and not news.

Under this roof are the heads of the family of Rothschild - a name famous in every capital of Europe and every division of the globe. If you like, we shall divide the United States into two parts, one for you, James [Rothschild], and one for you, Lionel [Rothschild]. Napoleon will do exactly and all that I shall advise him.

It is well-known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.

Religion should be the rule of life, not a casual incident in it.

I am myself a gentleman of the press, and have no other escutcheon.

Amusement to an observing mind is study.

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.

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

Expediency is a law of nature. The camel is a wonderful animal, but the desert made the camel.

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

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

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

The question is this - Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories.

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.

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

The disappointment of manhood succeeds the delusion of youth.

All Paradise opens! Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft music!

Debt is a prolific mother of folly and of crime.

There are few faces that can afford to smile: a smile is sometimes bewitching, in general vapid, often a contortion.

Nobody is forgotten, when it is convenient to remember him.

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

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence.

"Sorry" only counts for that which it cannot alter.

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

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

As men advance in life, all passions resolve themselves into money. Love, ambition, even poetry, end in this.

The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy.

A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.

Judaism is not complete without Christianity and without Judaism, Christianity would not exist.

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

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

Life is to short to be small.

No one for a moment can pretend that printing is so great a discovery as writing, or algebra as a language.

The expected always happens

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.

Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

Scientific, like spiritual truth, has ever from the beginning been descending from heaven to man.

It shows you exactly how a star is formed; nothing else can be so pretty! A cluster of vapor, the cream of the milky way, a sort of celestial cheese, churned into light.

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

Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions.

A man's fate is his own temper; and according to that will be his opinion as to the particular manner in which the course of events is regulated. A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance.

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

To be famous when you are young is the fortune of the gods.

The feeling of satiety, almost inseparable from large possessions, is a surer cause of misery than ungratified desires.

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

You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.

That youthful fervor, which is sometimes called enthusiasm, but which is a heat of imagination subsequently discovered to be inconsistent with the experience of actual life.

I think there is nothing more lovely than the love of two beautiful women who are not envious of each other's charms.