Benjamin Disraeli
Adventures are to the adventurous.
Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.
To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.
An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.
If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
A precedent embalms a principle.
The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.
The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.
Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.
King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.
Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.
Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.
To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.
The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.
It is easier to be critical than correct.
He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.
There can be economy only where there is efficiency.
Despair is the conclusion of fools.
Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.
I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.
How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.
When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.
We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.
Duty cannot exist without faith.
The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.
There is moderation even in excess.
There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.
Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.
That fatal drollery called a representative government.
The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.
Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.
What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.
Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.
Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.
London is a modern Babylon.
The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.
A majority is always better than the best repartee.
Great countries are those that produce great people.
Damn your principles! Stick to your party.
There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.
I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.