Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

Generally speaking, all the great events have been distorted, most of the important causes concealed, some of the principal characters never appear, and all who figure are so misunderstood and misrepresented, that the result is a complete mystification, and the perusal of the narrative about as profitable as reading the Republic of Plato or the Utopia if More.

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

In politics, nothing is contemptible.

It is vital to your Majesty's authority and power at this critical moment, that the Canal should belong to England.

Nothing can resist a human will that will stake its existence on a purpose

Is it what you call civilization that makes England flourish? Is it the universal development of the faculties of man that has rendered an island, almost unknown to the ancients, the arbiter of the world? Clearly not. It is the inhabitants that have done this. It is an affair of race.... All is race, there is no other truth.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

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; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws . . . . THE RICH AND THE POOR.

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

"What is care?" asked the Princess, with a smile.
"It is a god", replied the Physician, "invisible, but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse — it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair grey".

He has not a single redeeming defect.

Now, what is meant by the union between Church and State? ... I understand by it that authority is to be not merely political; that Government is to be not merely an affair of force, but is to recognize its responsibility to the Divine Power. Sir, we have discarded the divine right of Kings, and properly discarded it, because the divine right of Kings led to the abuse of supernatural power by individuals; but an intelligent age will never discard the divine right of Government. If Government is not divine, it is nothing. It is a mere affair of the police-office, of the tax-gatherer, of the guard-room.

Gentlemen, the Tory party, unless it is a national party, is nothing.

Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible, that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orator really did lose his virginity.

It is only by the amplification of titles that you can often touch and satisfy the imagination of nations; and that is an element which Governments must not despise.