Benjamin Disraeli great quotes, aphorisms, thoughts, words of wisdom and ideas of pragmatic literary political value very useful to understand the true spirit of the Victorian Age.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman and Conservative politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or “Tory democracy”. He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the glory and power of the British Empire. He is the only British prime minister to have been of Jewish birth. He was also a novelist, publishing works of fiction even as prime minister.
While Gladstone was strong on domestic policy and reform, he was perceived as weaker in foreign policy. Disraeli was strong precisely where Gladstone was weak; when the latter lost the 1885 election, he did so because Disraeli had succeeded in implanting the idea that imperial power was a measure of national greatness.
He was a strong supporter of Britain’s imperial role and during his ministry pursued a foreign policy of expansion in the Near East, forming an alliance with Turkey to defend British interest against the Russian challenge. In 1876 the Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli introduced the Royal Titles Bill, which made Queen Victoria the Empress of India and by 1900 the small island of Britain governed one fifth of the world territories.
Blake comments that Disraeli “produced an epic poem, unbelievably bad, and a five-act blank verse tragedy, if possible worse. Further he wrote a discourse on political theory and a political biography, the Life of Lord George Bentinck, which is excellent … remarkably fair and accurate.” But it is on his novels that Disraeli’s literary achievements are generally judged. They have from the outset divided critical opinion.
The writer R. W. Stewart observed that there have always been two criteria for judging Disraeli’s novels, one political and the other artistic. The critic Robert O’Kell, concurring, writes, “It is after all, even if you are a Tory of the staunchest blue, impossible to make Disraeli into a first-rate novelist. And it is equally impossible, no matter how much you deplore the extravagances and improprieties of his works, to make him into an insignificant one
There are three types of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli
Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.
Benjamin Disraeli
When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
Benjamin Disraeli
The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.
Benjamin Disraeli
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli
Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.
Benjamin Disraeli
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Benjamin Disraeli
One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.
Benjamin Disraeli
Everything comes if a man will only wait.
Benjamin Disraeli
My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.
Benjamin Disraeli
Life is too short to be little.
Benjamin Disraeli
Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.
Benjamin Disraeli
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
Benjamin Disraeli
Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
Benjamin Disraeli
To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli
Man is only great when he acts from passion.
Benjamin Disraeli
If Gladstone fell in the Thames, that would be a misfortune. But if someone fished him out again, that would be a calamity.
Benjamin Disraeli
What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.
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.
Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.
Benjamin Disraeli
Man is created for a purpose; the object of his existence is to perfect himself. Man is imperfect by nature, because if nature had made him perfect he would have had no wants; and it is only by supplying his wants that utility can be developed. The development of utility is therefore the object of our being, and the attainment of this great end the cause of our existence.
Benjamin Disraeli
England is governed not by logic but by parliament.
Benjamin Disraeli
Silence is the mother of truth
Benjamin Disraeli
Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.
Benjamin Disraeli
I cannot pay attention unless I am attracted,” said Egremont.
Benjamin Disraeli
Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.
Benjamin Disraeli
Never explain. Never complain.
Benjamin Disraeli
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
Benjamin Disraeli
Where knowledge ends, religion begins.
Benjamin Disraeli
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
Benjamin Disraeli
Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally create ourselves.
Benjamin Disraeli
As a rule, he or she who has the most information will have the greatest success in life.
Benjamin Disraeli
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.
Benjamin Disraeli
To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.
Benjamin Disraeli
Power has only one duty, to secure the social welfare of the people.
Benjamin Disraeli
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.
Benjamin Disraeli
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.
Benjamin Disraeli
The English in politics are as the old Hebrews in religion, ‘a favored and peculiar people.
Benjamin Disraeli
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.
Benjamin Disraeli
Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.
Benjamin Disraeli
The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.
Benjamin Disraeli
How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
Benjamin Disraeli
All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil.
Benjamin Disraeli
To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge
Benjamin Disraeli
The secret to success is constancy of purpose.
Benjamin Disraeli
The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Benjamin Disraeli
Little things affect little minds.
Benjamin Disraeli
The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
Benjamin Disraeli
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.
Benjamin Disraeli
The expected always happens
Benjamin Disraeli
Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.
Benjamin Disraeli
Do not read history. Read biography for it is life without theory.
Benjamin Disraeli
Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.
Benjamin Disraeli
Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
Benjamin Disraeli
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours
Benjamin Disraeli
I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.
Benjamin Disraeli
The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
Benjamin Disraeli
Ignorance never settles a question.
Benjamin Disraeli
Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men.
Benjamin Disraeli
What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history
Benjamin Disraeli
What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.
Benjamin Disraeli
Little things affect little minds
Disraeli
Justice is truth in action.
Benjamin Disraeli
The canter is a cure for every evil.
Benjamin Disraeli
Success is the child of audacity.
Benjamin Disraeli
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations.
Disraeli
There is no education like adversity.
Benjamin Disraeli
It is well-known what a middleman is; he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.
Benjamin Disraeli
You asked me where I generally lived. In my workshop [i.e. in his study] in the mornings and always in the library in the evening. Books are companions even if you don’t open them.
Benjamin Disraeli
In politics, nothing is contemptible.
Benjamin Disraeli
An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.
Benjamin Disraeli
Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.
Benjamin Disraeli
Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.
Benjamin Disraeli
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.
Benjamin Disraeli
Every woman should marry … and no man.
Benjamin Disraeli
I feel a very unusual sensation – if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.
Benjamin Disraeli
There is no index of character as sure as the voice.
Benjamin Disraeli
Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.
Benjamin Disraeli
Departures should be sudden.
Benjamin Disraeli
Books are companions even if you don’t open them.
Benjamin Disraeli
It has been my lot to have found myself in many distant lands. I have never been in one without finding a Scotchman, and I never found a Scotchman who was not head of the poll.
Benjamin Disraeli
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.
Benjamin Disraeli
Political life must be taken as you find it.
Benjamin Disraeli
There is no act of treachery or mean-ness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour
Benjamin Disraeli
Justice is truth in action.
Benjamin Disraeli
In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of cooperation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes;; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbors. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.
Benjamin Disraeli
Never apologize, never explain.
Benjamin Disraeli
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
Benjamin Disraeli
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Benjamin Disraeli
Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.
Benjamin Disraeli
A consistent man believes in destiny; a capricious man in chance.
Benjamin Disraeli
We live in an age where to be young and to be indifferent can no longer by synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the future are represented by suffering millions; and the youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity
Benjamin Disraeli
Man must ever be the slave of routine: but in old days it was a routine of great thoughts, and now it is a routine of little ones.
Benjamin Disraeli
I believe that nothing in newspapers is ever true,” said Madame Phoebus. “And that is why they are so popular,” added Euphrosyne; “the tast of the age being so decidedly for fiction.
Benjamin Disraeli, Lothair
Life Is Too Short to be Small
Benjamin Disraeli
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.
Benjamin Disraeli
An English revolution is at least a solemn sacrifice: a French revolution is an indecent massacre.
Benjamin Disraeli
In all things we trace the irresistible influence of the individual.
Benjamin Disraeli
Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli
When I want to read a book, I write one.
Benjamin Disraeli
Nothing resists a human will that stakes its very existence upon the achievement of its purpose
Benjamin Disraeli
The East is a career.
Benjamin Disraeli
The world is a wheel, and it will all come round right.
Benjamin Disraeli
Never complain, never explain.
Benjamin Disraeli
Talk to people about themselves and they will listen for hours
Benjamin Disraeli
I cannot pay attention unless I am attracted.
Benjamin Disraeli
It is a holy thing to see a state saved by its youth.
Benjamin Disraeli
When I want to read a good book I write one.
Benjamin Disraeli
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens
Benjamin Disraeli
The Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.
Benjamin Disraeli
And then they say one is misanthropical. Hang it! who can help being misanthropical when he finds everybody getting on in life except himself?
Benjamin Disraeli
In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of cooperation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbors. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.
Benjamin Disraeli
The English in politics are as the old Hebrews in religion, a favoured and peculiar people.
Benjamin Disraeli
He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
Benjamin Disraeli
When I want to read a novel, I write one.
Benjamin Disraeli
Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.
Benjamin Disraeli
A canter is the cure for all evil.
Benjamin Disraeli
Silence is the mother of truth.
Benjamin Disraeli
Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.
Benjamin Disraeli
Read no history, nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.
Benjamin Disraeli
Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.
Benjamin Disraeli
It destroys one’s nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.
Benjamin Disraeli
Grief is the agony of an instant: the indulgence of grief is the blunder of life.
Benjamin Disraeli
The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Benjamin Disraeli
Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.
Benjamin Disraeli
He who gains time gains everything.
Benjamin Disraeli
Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.
Benjamin Disraeli
When I want to read a good book, I write one.
Benjamin Disraeli
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!
Benjamin Disraeli
There is no wisdom like frankness.
Benjamin Disraeli
Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.
Benjamin Disraeli
Other men condemned to exile and captivity, if they survive, despair; the man of letters may reckon those days as the sweetest of his life
Benjamin Disraeli
If you wish to win a man”s heart, allow him to confute you.
Benjamin Disraeli
The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.
Benjamin Disraeli
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.
Benjamin Disraeli
Nothing can resist a human will that will stake its existence on a purpose
Benjamin Disraeli
Talk to people about themselves, and they will listen for hours.
Benjamin Disraeli
Change is inevitable. Change is constant.
Benjamin Disraeli
The messenger from the Republics of the West now prostrated himself before the Statue. He informed it that two parties had, unfortunately, broken out in these countries, and threatened their speedy dissolution; that one party maintained that all human government originated in the wants of man; while the other party asserted that it originated in the desires of man. That these factions had become so violent and so universal that public business was altogether stopped.
Benjamin Disraeli
Political institutions, founded on abstract rights and principles, are mere nullities.
Benjamin Disraeli
Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power
Benjamin Disraeli
There are exceptions to all rules, but it seldom answers to follow the advice of an opponent.
Benjamin Disraeli
I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is mortifying, that there is only one step between his state who deeply indulges in imaginative meditation, and insanity.
Benjamin Disraeli
The history of Heroes is the history of Youth.
Benjamin Disraeli
We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous.
Benjamin Disraeli
Yes, said Lady St Julians: “I think those men who breakfast out or who give breakfasts are generally dangerous characters; at least, I would not trust them.”
Benjamin Disraeli
In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of cooperation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.
Benjamin Disraeli
On the Victorian period you can also read the following articles:
Books by Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield
The Victorian Age in Literature by G. K. Chesterton
