Benjamin Disraeli quotes:

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One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.
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.
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.
The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.
Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.
The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.
To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.
The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.
William Gladstone has not a single redeeming defect.
A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.
Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.
Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.
Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.
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.
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.
Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Assassination has never changed the history of the world.
Worry - 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.
Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.
You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.
A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.
Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.
To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.
The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.
The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.
Justice is truth in action.
I say that justice is truth in action.
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.
Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.
Change is inevitable. Change is constant.
In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable.
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.
Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Great countries are those that produce great people.
Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.
You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.
There is no education like adversity.
No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.
That fatal drollery called a representative government.
Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.
Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.
War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.
An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.
Diligence is the mother of good fortune.
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
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.
Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.
The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.
The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.
Man is only great when he acts from passion.
Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.
It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.
Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.
There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.
Finality is not the language of politics.
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.
Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.
The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
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 European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.
Small things affects small minds.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.
Adventures are to the adventurous.
Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.
Amusement to an observing mind is study.
Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.
Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.
What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.
I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension.
Where knowledge ends, religion begins.
No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.
Success is the child of audacity.
Twilight makes us pensive; Aurora is the goddess of activity; despair curses at midnight; hope blesses at noon.
London is a modern Babylon.
It is well-known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.
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.
Women carry a beautiful hand with them to the grave, when a beautiful face has long ago vanished.
The art of conversation is to be prompt without being stubborn, to refute without argument, and to clothe great matters in a motley garb.
Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.
Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.
A parsimony of words prodigal of sense.
It is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption, although they may be very convenient for gratifying the ambition or the vanity of individuals, have any great effect upon the fortunes or the power of parties. And it is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption are means by which power can either be ob-tained or retained.
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.
Candor is the brightest gem of criticism.
Coquettes are, but too rare. It is a career that requires great abilities, infinite pains, a gay and airy spirit. 'T is the coquette who provides all the amusements,--suggests the riding-party, plans the picnic, gives and guesses charades, acts them. She is the stirring element amid the heavy congeries of social atoms,--the soul of the house, the salt of the banquet.
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.' That depends, Sir,' said Disraeli, 'whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.
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.
Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.
Never complain and never explain.
Conservatism... offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.
The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.
The characteristic of the present age is craving credulity.
How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.
A dark horse, which had never been thought of, rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph.
The first favourite was never heard of, the second favourite was never seen after the distance post, all the ten-to-oners were in the rear, and a dark horse which had never been thought of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grand stand in sweeping triumph.
Popular privileges are consistent with a state of society in which there is great inequality of position. Democratic rights, on the contrary, demand that there should be equality of condition as the fundamental basis of the society they regulate.
I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.
Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.
Sir, very few people reach posterity. Who amongst us may arrive at that destination I presume not to vaticinate. Posterity is a most limited assembly. Those gentlemen who reach posterity are not much more numerous than the planets.
When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.
The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.
Fame has eagle wings, and yet she mounts not so high as man's desires.

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