Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881)
British politician, novelist, and essayist, serving twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
I am dead: dead, but in the Elysian fields.
I have always felt that the best security for civilisation is the dwelling, and that upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends more than anything else the improvement of mankind. Such dwellings are the nursery of all domestic virtues, and without a becoming home the exercise of those virtues is impossible.
Nature is more powerful than education; time will develop everything.
I don't wish to go down to posterity talking bad grammar.
[On his deathbed, after hearing that Queen Victoria wanted to visit him.] What's the use? She would only want me to take a message to dear Albert.
This is to be observed of the Bishop of London, that, though apparently of a spirit somewhat austere, there is in his idiosyncrasy a strange fund of enthusiasm, a quality which ought never to be possessed by an Archbishop of Canterbury, or a Prime Minister of England. The Bishop of London sympathies with everything that is earnest; but what is earnest is not always true; on the contrary error is often more earnest than truth.
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
"I rather like bad wine," said Mr. Mountchesney; "one gets so bored with good wine."
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.
Amusement to an observing mind is study.
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
The worst atrocity in Bulgaria is Gladstone's pamphlet on the subject.
A series of congratulatory regrets.
On the education of the people of this country the fate of the country depends.
You have despoiled Churches. You have threatened every corporation and endowment in the country. You have examined into everybody's affairs. You have criticized every profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and nobody knows what duties he may have to perform tomorrow. This is the policy of confiscation as compared with that of concurrent endowment.
London is a roost for every bird.
"Manners are easy," said Coningsby, "and life is hard."
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.
He seems to think that posterity is a pack-horse, always ready to be loaded.
Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize.