Isaac DIsraeli Quotes - Page 3

Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear.

The most noble criticism is that in which the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author.

A poet is a painter of the soul.

Bayle, when writing on "Comets," discovered this; for having collected many things applicable to his work, as they stood quoted in some modern writers, when he came to compare them with their originals, he was surprised to find that they were nothing for his purpose! the originals conveyed a quite contrary sense to that of the pretended quoters, who often, from innocent blundering, and sometimes from purposed deception, had falsified their quotations. This is an useful story for second-hand authorities!

Such do not always understand the authors whose names adorn their barren pages, and which are taken, too, from the third or the thirtieth hand. Those who trust to such false quoters will often learn how contrary this transmission is to the sense and application of the original. Every transplantation has altered the fruit of the tree; every new channel, the quality of the stream in its remove from the spring-head.

It is generally supposed that where there is no QUOTATION, there will be found most originality; and as people like to lay out their money according to their notions, our writers usually furnish their pages rapidly with the productions of their own soil: they run up a quickset hedge, or plant a poplar, and get trees and hedges of this fashion much faster than the former landlords procured their timber. The greater part of our writers, in consequence, have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them; and those who never quote, in return are never quoted!

A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the wit of other men; he searches where knowledge is to be found; and though he may not himself excel in invention, his ingenuity may compose one of those agreeable books, the deliciæ of literature, that will out-last the fading meteors of his day.

The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract.

The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves - the creature of habits and infirmities.

Golden volumes! richest treasures, Objects of delicious pleasures! You my eyes rejoicing please, You my hand in rapture seize! Brilliant wits and musing sages, Lights who beam'd through many ages! Left to your conscious leaves their story, And dared to trust you with their glory; And now their hope of fame achiev'd, Dear volumes! you have not deceived!

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius-the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

Literary friendship is a sympathy not of manners, but of feelings.

Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on the side of genius. When education ends, genius often begins.

A circle may be small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a large one.

Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention.

The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle contest.

The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.