Benjamin Disraeli

Amusement to an observing mind is study.

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

With words we govern men.

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

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.

If a man be gloomy, let him keep to himself. No one has a right to go croaking about society, or, what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

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

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

We are indeed a nation of shopkeepers.

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

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 grandstand in sweeping triumph.

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

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.

wherever everything was left to the government the subject became a machine.

Wherever was found what was called a paternal government was found a state education. It had been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience was to commence tyranny in the nursery.

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

This man, O'Connell, is the hired instrument of the Papacy; as such, his mission is to destroy your Protestant Society, and, as such, he is a more terrible enemy to England than Napoleon, with all his inspiration. Your empire and your …

But, my Lord, how thunderstruck must be our visitor when he is told to recognise a Secretary of State in an infinitely small scarabæus;—yes, my Lord, when he learns, that you are the leader of the English House of Commons, our traveller …

Your aim is to reduce every thing to your own mean level—to degrade every thing to your malignant standard... In all your conduct it is not difficult to detect the workings of a mean and long mortified spirit suddenly invested with …

Busied with the tattle of valets and waiting-maids, you accidentally omitted in your Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe all notice of its most vast and most rising empire. This luckless production closed your literary career; you flung down …

I look upon the Whigs as an anti-national party... Believing that the policy of the party was such as must destroy the honour of the kingdom abroad and the happiness of the people at home, I considered it my duty to oppose the Whigs, to …

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