Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

328 Sourced Quotes

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

Benjamin Disraeli
There are so many plans, so many schemes, and so many reasons why there should be neither plans nor schemes.

Benjamin Disraeli
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.

Benjamin Disraeli
He seems to think that posterity is a pack-horse, always ready to be loaded.

Benjamin Disraeli
Imagination is too often accompanied by somewhat irregular logic.

Benjamin Disraeli
All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who can condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character, or illustrates an existence.

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

Benjamin Disraeli
I remember—the interruption of the hon. Gentleman reminds me of the words of a great writer, who said that "Grace was beauty in action." 'Sir, I say that justice is truth in action. Truth should animate an opposition, and I hope it does animate this opposition.;

Benjamin Disraeli
For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering.

Benjamin Disraeli
Free trade is not a principle; it is an expedient.

Benjamin Disraeli
A machine is a slave that neither brings nor bears degradation.

Benjamin Disraeli
Generally speaking, among sensible persons, it would seem that a rich man deems that friend a sincere one who does not want to borrow his money; while, among the less favored with fortune's gifts, the sincere friend is generally esteemed to be the individual who is ready to lend it.

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

Benjamin Disraeli
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.

Benjamin Disraeli
Why should one say that the machine does not live? It breathes, for its breath forms the atmosphere of some towns.

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

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
The House of Commons is absolute. It is the State. 'L'État c'est moi.'

Benjamin Disraeli
Life is not dated merely by years. Events are sometimes the best calendars.

Benjamin Disraeli
He had lived long enough to know that it is unwise to wish everything explained.

Benjamin Disraeli
Doubt is an element of criticism, and the tendency of criticism is necessarily skeptical.

Benjamin Disraeli
There can be no economy where there is no efficiency.

Benjamin Disraeli
The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

Benjamin Disraeli