Benjamin Disraeli - Time Quotes

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We owe the English peerage to three sources: the spoliation of the Church; the open and flagrant sale of honours by the elder Stuarts; and the borough-mongering of our own time.

Benjamin Disraeli
One event makes another. What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens; and time can only prove which is most for our advantage.

Benjamin Disraeli
Great men should think of opportunity and not of time. That is the excuse of feeble and puzzled spirits.

Benjamin Disraeli
There is scarcely any popular tenet more erroneous than that which holds that when time is slow, life is dull.

Benjamin Disraeli
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.

Benjamin Disraeli
This is the third time that, in the course of six years, during which I have had the lead of the Opposition in the House of Commons, I have stormed the Treasury Benches: twice, fruitlessly, the third time with a tin kettle to my tail which rendered the race hopeless. You cannot, therefore, be surprised, that I am a little wearied of these barren victories, which like Alma, Inkerman, and Balaclava, may be glorious but are certainly nothing more.

Benjamin Disraeli
I see before me the statue of a celebrated minister, who said that confidence was a plant of slow growth. But I believe, however gradual may be the growth of confidence, that of credit requires still more time to arrive at maturity.

Benjamin Disraeli
Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.

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

Benjamin Disraeli
What, then, was that policy? It was a policy of conditional neutrality. Under the circumstances of the case we did not believe that it was for the honour or interest of England or Turkey that we should take any part in the impending contest; but while we enforced the neutrality which we prepared to observe, we declared at the same time that that neutrality must cease if British interests were assailed or menaced. Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own, have denounced this policy as a selfish policy. My Lord Mayor, it is as selfish as patriotism.

Benjamin Disraeli
A sophistical rhetorician [Gladstone], 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
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
I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.

Benjamin Disraeli
Nature is more powerful than education; time will develop everything.

Benjamin Disraeli
The Services in war time are fit only for desperadoes but, in peace, are fit only for fools.

Benjamin Disraeli
I have begun several times many things, and I have often succeeded at last.

Benjamin Disraeli
Though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.

Benjamin Disraeli
You must possess at the same time the habit of communicating and the habit of listening. The union is rather rare, but irresistible.

Benjamin Disraeli