Benjamin Disraeli citations (307 citations, Page 8)

Benjamin Disraeli: 307 citations 0 J'aime

Benjamin Disraeli Citations

“C'est une époque romanesque. Les trônes s'effondrent, les couronnes sont offertes comme dans un conte de fées, et les personnes les plus puissantes du monde, hommes et femmes, étaient il y a quelques années des aventuriers, des exilés, des demi-mondaines. Vive la bagatelle!”

Benjamin Disraeli

femmes , hommes , personnes , monde

Benjamin Disraeli: Citations en anglais

“Which do you believe most likely to enter an insane convention, a body of English gentlemen honoured by the favour of their Sovereign and the confidence of their fellow-subjects, managing your affairs for five years, I hope with prudence, and not altogether without success, or a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself?”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech to a banquet given to him in Knightsbridge, attacking William Gladstone for calling the Cyprus Convention an "insane covenant" (27 July 1878), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), pp. 1228-9.

“The danger at such a moment is that designing politicians may take advantage of such sublime sentiments and may apply them for the furtherance of their sinister ends. I do not think there is any language which can denounce too strongly conduct of this description. He who at such a moment would avail himself of such a commanding sentiment in order to obtain his own individual ends, suggesting a course which he may know to be injurious to the interests of the country, and not favourable to the welfare of mankind, is a man whose conduct no language can too strongly condemn. He outrages the principle of patriotism, which is the soul of free communities. He does more—he influences in the most injurious manner the common welfare of humanity. Such conduct, if it be pursued by any man at this moment, ought to be indignantly reprobated by the people of England; for, in the general havoc and ruin which it may bring about, it may, I think, be fairly described as worse than any of those Bulgarian atrocities which now occupy attention.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech to the annual meeting of the Royal and Central Bucks Agricultural Association in Aylesbury (20 September 1876), quoted in 'Lord Beaconsfield At Aylesbury', The Times (21 September 1876), p. 6.

“Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Count Alarcos: A Tragedy Act IV, sc. i (1839).
Books

“London is a modern Babylon.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Bk. V, Ch. 5.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Tancred (1847)

“It is the initial letters of the four points of the compass that make the word "news," and he must understand that news is that which collies from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point of the compass, then it is a class publication, and not news.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1855/mar/26/newspaper-stamp-duties-bill in the House of Commons (26 March 1855).
1850s

“His Christianity was muscular.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 14.

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

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Benjamin Disraeli

Part 1, Chapter 8. Compare: "La Nature a été en eux forte que l'éducation" (translated: "Nature was a stronger force in them than education"), Voltaire, Vie de Molière.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)

“The Services in war time are fit only for desperadoes but, in peace, are fit only for fools.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Book I, Chapter 9.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)

“My objection to Liberalism is this—that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind—namely, politics—of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/jun/05/expulsion-of-the-british-ambassador-from in the House of Commons (5 June 1848).

“Amusement to an observing mind is study.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Part 1, Chapter 23.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)

“You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when Gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/aug/30/business-of-the-session in the House of Commons (30 August 1848).

“I rather like bad wine," said Mr. Mountchesney; "one gets so bored with good wine.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Book 1, chapter 1.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845)

“An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 37.

“I think the author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech at banquet given by the city of Glasgow to Disraeli on his inauguration as Lord Rector of Glasgow University (19 November 1870), cited in Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Collected from his Writings and Speeches (1881), p. 16.

“A series of congratulatory regrets.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Lord Hartington's Resolutions on the Berlin Treaty (30 July 1878).

“The movement of the middle classes for the abolition of slavery was virtuous, but it was not wise. It was an ignorant movement. It showed a want of knowledge both of the laws of commerce and the stipulations of treaties; and it has alike ruined the colonies and aggravated the slave trade…The history of the abolition of slavery by the English and its consequences, would be a narrative of ignorance, injustice, blundering, waste, and havoc, not easily paralleled in the history of mankind.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (1852), pp. 324-325.
1850s

“You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public men.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Cited in Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert Marquis of Salisbury: 1868-1880, Vol. 2. (1921), p. 205.
Sourced but undated

“When a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870), Ch. 28.

“I say that there are two systems of policy to apply to the management of what is commonly called the Eastern question, but which resolves itself into the geographical question, namely, the possession of that site which commands the empire of the world—the city of Constantinople. There is that school of opinions which I call British opinions, advocated by the noble Lord the Leader of this House (Lord J. Russell) and the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Viscount Palmerston), who believe in the vitality of Turkey, that it may remain an independent and even a progressive country, and form a powerful and sufficient barrier against the encroachment of Russia. There is the other school, which I call the school of Russian polities, that believes that Turkey is exhausted; that all we can do is, by gradually enfranchising the Christian population, to prevent, when its fall takes place, perfect anarchy, and contemplates the possibility of Russia occupying the Bosphorus.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1854/mar/31/war-with-russia-the-queens-message in the House of Commons (21 March 1854).
1850s

“Man is not a rational animal. He is only truly good or great when he acts from passion.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Book 6, chapter 12.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)

“The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870), Ch. 17.

“Beware of endeavouring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed: these are fearful odds.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Book I, Chapter 10.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)

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

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Benjamin Disraeli

Book I, Chapter 6.
Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831)

“In the great struggle between popular principles and liberal opinions, which is the characteristic of our age, I hope ever to be found on the side of the people, and of the Institutions, of England. It is our Institutions that have made us free, and can alone keep us so; by the bulwark which they offer to the insidious encroachments of a convenient, yet enervating, system of centralisation, which, if left unchecked, will prove fatal to the national character.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Address to the electors of Buckinghamshire (25 May 1847), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 837.
1840s

“Now I must tell that nothing will induce me to support the 3 F's—three fiddlesticks. During a long parliamentary life, and long before I was in Parliament, I have been profoundly convinced, that the greatness and character of this country depended on our landed tenure. All the rest, I look upon, and have ever looked upon, as "leather and prunella". I fear the pass is sold… I have formally, and even solemnly, warned the house in wh[ich] I now sit, that the landed system of this country would be attacked and invaded by the revolutionary party.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Letter to Lord Salisbury (27 December 1880), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 1468.
1880s

“That is an apology, not an explanation; and apologies only account for that which they do not alter.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1871/jul/28/parliament-order-of-business in the House of Commons (28 July 1871).

“This is the third time that, in the course of six years, during which I have had the lead of the Opposition in the House of Commons, I have stormed the Treasury Benches: twice, fruitlessly, the third time with a tin kettle to my tail which rendered the race hopeless. You cannot, therefore, be surprised, that I am a little wearied of these barren victories, which like Alma, Inkerman, and Balaclava, may be glorious but are certainly nothing more.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Letter to Lady Londonderry (22 February 1854), in Benjamin Disraeli, Letters: 1852-1856 (1997), p. 405.
1850s

“That is the fourth course, which in future I trust the right hon. Gentleman (Sir R. Peel) will not forget. The right hon. Gentleman tells us to go back to precedents; with him a great measure is always founded on a small precedent. He traces the steam-engine always back to the tea-kettle. His precedents are generally tea-kettle precedents.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/apr/11/maynooth-college in the House of Commons (11 April 1845).
1840s

“Time is the great physician.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Book 6, chapter 9.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)

“The democracy of America must not be confounded with the democracies of old Europe. It is not the scum of turbulent cities, nor is it a mere section of an excited middle class speculating in shares and calling it progress. It is a territorial democracy, if I may use that epithet without offending hon. Gentlemen opposite. Aristotle, who has taught us most of the wise things we know, never said a wiser thing than that the cultivators of the soil are the class least inclined to sedition and to violent courses.”

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Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1865/mar/13/defences-of-canada-colonel-jervois#column_1572 in the House of Commons (13 March 1865).