Isaac DIsraeli Quotes - Page 2

The Plagiarism of orators is the art, or an ingenious and easy mode, which some adroitly employ to change, or disguise, all sorts of speeches of their own composition, or that of other authors, for their pleasure, or their utility; in such a manner that it becomes impossible even for the author himself to recognise his own work, his own genius, and his own style, so skilfully shall the whole be disguised.

Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.

After the golden age of Latinity, we gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into the iron.

Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonize.

There is such a thing as literary fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats.

Those who never quote, in return are never quoted.

Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners

A work, however, should be judged by its design and its execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the critic, rather than the author.

Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause.

To bend and prostrate oneself to express sentiments of respect, appears to be a natural motion.

Candour is the brightest gem of criticism.

Style! style! why, all writers will tell you that it is the very thing which can least of all be changed. A man's style is nearly as much a part of him as his physiognomy, his figure, the throbbing of this pulse,--in short, as any part of his being is at least subjected to the action of the will.

It does not at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting his team.

Centuries have not worm-eaten the solidity of this ancient furniture of the mind.

An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age.

Every work of Genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the events of times.

The Self-Educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.

If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.

Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, enthusiasm is the true part of genius.

The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius.

After all, it is style alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style.

Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers.

The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory.

Happy the man when he has not the defects of his qualities.