Benjamin Disraeli

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for the truth.

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

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

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies both human and divine meet.

The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes but in peace are only fit for fools.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

What is earnest is not always true, on the contrary error is often more earnest than truth.

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society or what is worse looking as if he stifled grief.

The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

Never take anything for granted.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends more than anything else the improvement of mankind.

Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence and its only end.

Experience is the child of thought and thought is the child of action.

Nowadays manners are easy and life is hard.

War is never a solution, it is an aggravation.

Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

There is moderation even in excess.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.

Silence is the mother of truth.

It is easier to be critical than correct.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

Mediocrity can talk but it is for genius to observe.

Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

Be amusing: never tell unkind stories, above all never tell long ones.

We moralize among ruins.

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

I say that justice is truth in action.

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.

Read no history: nothing but biography for that is life without theory.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

Taking a new step uttering a new word is what people fear most.

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.

It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.

Without publicity there can be no public support and without public support every nation must decay.

Man is only great when he acts from passion.

Never complain and never explain.

There are three kinds of lies: lies damned lies and statistics.

Change is inevitable. Change is constant.

The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.

Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.

Man is not the creature of circumstances circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents and man is more powerful than matter.

Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy, who are as ignorant of each other's habits thoughts and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

As for our majority... one is enough.

Teach us that wealth is not elegance that profusion is not magnificence that splendor is not beauty.

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again that would be a calamity.

I have brought myself by long meditation to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

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.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend in the course of my career if I have time to give a specimen of both.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

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.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

There is no index of character so sure as the voice.

Justice is truth in action.

Little things affect little minds.

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.

We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

Plagiarists at least have the merit of preservation.

Circumstances are beyond human control but our conduct is in our own power.

Success is the child of audacity.

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.

Where knowledge ends religion begins.

Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

He was distinguished for ignorance, for he had only one idea and that was wrong.

London is a roost for every bird.

Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

There is no gambling like politics.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Genius when young is divine.

The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world, it is more it is the history of earth and of heaven.

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

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.