“It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.”
Book III, Chapter 2.
Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831)
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“I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.”
Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870), Ch. 30.
“No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.”
Theory held by Disraeli, cited in Sir William Fraser, Disraeli and his Day (1891), p. 142.
Sourced but undated
“I am dead: dead, but in the Elysian fields.”
Source: Remark to Lord Aberdare on being welcomed to the House of Lords (1876), cited by Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography (1993), p. 563.
Source: Speech at Dover, England after arriving from the Congress of Berlin (16 July 1878), quoted in 'Return Of Lord Beaconsfield And Lord Salisbury', The Times (17 July 1878), p. 5.
“The harebrained chatter of irresponsible frivolity.”
Speech, Guildhall, London (1878-11-09).
1870s
“We are indeed a nation of shopkeepers.”
Book I, Chapter 11.
Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831)
“There is moderation even in excess.”
Book VI, Chapter 1.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)
“Debt is the prolific mother of folly and of crime.”
Book 2, chapter 1.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)
“London is a roost for every bird.”
Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870), Ch. 11.
“Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.”
Part 1, Chapter 23.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)
“The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.”
Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 36.
“You know who critics are?— the men who have failed in literature and art.”
Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870), Ch. 35. Compare: "Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics", Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, p. 36. Delivered 1811–1812; "Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic", Percy Bysshe Shelley, Fragments of Adonais.
“They that touch pitch will be defiled.”
Actually spoken by Dogberry in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (III.3). The KJV Bible (Ecclesiasticus 13:1) has "He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith".
Misattributed
“He has not a single redeeming defect.”
On William Ewart Gladstone; attributed in William S. Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities (1892), p. 357.
Sourced but undated
“As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.”
Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 36.