Isaac DIsraeli Quotes

It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.

One may quote till one compiles.

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

Beware of the man of one book. [Lat., Home unius libri, or, cave ab homine unius libri.]

Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive family of genius.

There is a society in the deepest solitude.

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

The great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire.

Quotations, like much better things, has its abuses.

The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.

All this is labour which never meets the eye.... But too open and generous a revelation of the chapter and the page of the original quoted, has often proved detrimental to the legitimate honours of the quoter. They are unfairly appropriated by the next comer; the quoter is never quoted, but the authority he has afforded is produced by his successor with the air of an original research.

The negroes are lovers of ludicrous actions, and hence all their ceremonies seem farcical.

The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in all places, and men of genius, in their walks, at table, and amidst assemblies, turning the eye of the the mind upwards, can form an artificial solitude; retired amidst a crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly.

The greater part of our writers have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them: and those who never quote in return are seldom quoted.

There is an art of reading, an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract. Whenever the mind of a writer is saturated with the full inspiration of a great author, a quotation gives completeness to the whole; it seals his feelings with undisputed authority.

Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius.

But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses.

A learned historian declared to me of a contemporary, that the latter had appropriated his researches; he might, indeed, and he had a right to refer to the same originals; but if his predecessor had opened the sources for him, gratitude is not a silent virtue.

The delights of reading impart the vivacity of youth even to old age.

This is one of the results of that adventurous spirit which is now stalking forth and raging for its own innovations. We have not only rejected AUTHORITY, but have also cast away EXPERIENCE; and often the unburthened vessel is driving to all points of the compass, and the passengers no longer know whither they are going. The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by QUOTATION.

A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumnity, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principal has taken full effect on this state favorite.

It is fortunate that Literature is in no ways injured by the follies of Collectors, since though they preserve the worthless, they necessarily defend the good.

Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public.