Benjamin Disraeli

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

— Benjamin Disraeli

The disappointment of manhood succeeds the delusion of youth.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Youth is a blunder, manhood is a struggle and old age a regret.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

Amusement to an observing mind is study.

— Benjamin Disraeli

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

— Benjamin Disraeli

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Candor is the brightest gem of criticism.

— Benjamin Disraeli

There is no wisdom like frankness.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Change is inevitable. Change is constant.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

Christianity is completed Judaism or it is nothing.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Man is more powerful than matter.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

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.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

— Benjamin Disraeli

If you are not very clever, you should be conciliatory.

— Benjamin Disraeli

A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.

— Benjamin Disraeli

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Everything comes if a man will only wait.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

— Benjamin Disraeli

A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.

— Benjamin Disraeli

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Duty cannot exist without faith.

— Benjamin Disraeli

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

— Benjamin Disraeli

On the education of the people of this country the fate of the country depends.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

— Benjamin Disraeli

There is no education like adversity.

— Benjamin Disraeli

The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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.

— Benjamin Disraeli

What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

— Benjamin Disraeli

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

— Benjamin Disraeli

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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.

— Benjamin Disraeli

We make our fortunes and we call them fate.

— Benjamin Disraeli

He has not a single redeeming defect.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Genius, when young, is divine.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Man is only truly great when he acts from his passions.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

— Benjamin Disraeli

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.

— Benjamin Disraeli

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

— Benjamin Disraeli

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.

— Benjamin Disraeli

How very seldom do you encounter in the world a man of great abilities, acquirements, experience, who will unmask his mind, unbutton his brains, and pour forth in careless and picturesque phrase all the results of his studies and observation; his knowledge of men, books, and nature. On the contrary, if a man has by any chance an original idea, he hoards it as if it were old gold; and rather avoids the subject with which he is most conversant, from fear that you may appropriate his best thoughts.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Had it not been for you, I should have remained what I was when we first met, a prejudiced, narrow-minded being, with contracted sympathies and false knowledge, wasting my life on obsolete trifles, and utterly insensible to the privilege of living in this wondrous age of change and progress.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Justice is truth in action.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

No affection and a great brain, these are the people to command the world.

— Benjamin Disraeli

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

— Benjamin Disraeli

A university should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

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.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

— Benjamin Disraeli

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

— Benjamin Disraeli

The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end.

— Benjamin Disraeli

To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Little things affect little minds.

— Benjamin Disraeli

We moralize among ruins.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Great countries are those that produce great people.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

— Benjamin Disraeli

In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbors. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves; modern society acknowledges no neighbor.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

That doctrine of peace at any price has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in this country. It has occasioned more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties and the welfare of the world.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Plagiarists at least have the quality of preservation.

— Benjamin Disraeli

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.

— Benjamin Disraeli

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

— Benjamin Disraeli

A Conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.

— Benjamin Disraeli

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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.

— Benjamin Disraeli