“The life of this people greatly accords with my taste, which is naturally somewhat indolent and melancholy... To repose on voluptuous ottomans and smoke superb pipes, daily to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which requires half a dozen attendants for its perfection; to court the air in a carved caïque, by shores which are a perpetual scene; and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a barb; this is, I think, a far more sensible life than all the bustle of clubs, all the boring of drawing-rooms, and all the coarse vulgarity of our political controversies.”
Source: Letter to Edward Lytton Bulwer from Constantinople, Turkey (27 December 1830), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 174
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Benjamin Disraeli 306
British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Pri… 1804–1881Related quotes

Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 105.
1926
Context: A character founded on pietas and gravitas had its roots in truth, and I am proud to think that the English word has been held in no less honour than the Roman... It is from Ammian, who wrote while the legions were leaving Britain, that we learn that the Roman word could no longer be trusted. That is to me a far more significant portent than the aggregation of the population in cities, the immense luxury, and the exhaustion of the permanent sources of wealth, all of which combined to sap that very character whose continued existence was necessary for the life of the State.

Melancholy hours, The Poetical Works and remains of Henry Kirke White, G. Routledge, London 1835.
Melancholy Hours

Statement upon joining the Montreal Pipe Smokers Club (1950)
1950s

‘To Mr. Attwood’, Political Register (5 May 1821), p. 343
1820s

Letter to his son, George Mason V. (8 January 1783)

Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola