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(no category)
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Mr Kremlin himself was distinguished for ignorance, for he had only one idea,and that was wrong.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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That we may live to see England once more possess a free Monarchy and a privileged and prosperous People, is my Prayer; that these great consequences can only be brought about by the energy and devotion of our Youth is my persuasion. We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole!
-Benjamin Disraeli
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The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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I was told, continued Egremont, that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations, governed by different laws, influenced by different manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in common; with an innate inability of mutual comprehension.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and therefore when gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at the scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which, I hope, will keep it great.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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You have despoiled churches. You have threatened every corporation and endowment in the country. You have examined into everybodys affairs. You have criticised every profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and nobody knows what duties he may have to perform to-morrow. This is the policy of confiscation as compared with that of concurrent endowment.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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At present the peace of the world has been preserved, not by statesmen, but by capitalists.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible, that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orator really did lose his virginity.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Never complain and never explain.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Sir, I say that justice is truth in action.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Age
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The disappointment of manhood succeeds the delusion of youth.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Youth is a blunder, manhood is a struggle and old age a regret.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Agreement
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My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Assassination
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Assassination has never changed the history of the world.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Attitude
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The conduct of men depends upon the temperament, not upon a bunch of musty maxims.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Authors & Writing
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An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Boredom
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The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Bravery
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Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Business
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It is well-known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Chance
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Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Change
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Change is inevitable. Change is constant.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Character
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Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Christianity
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Christianity is completed Judaism or it is nothing.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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City Life, Cities
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A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Civilization
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Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Community
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Coalitions though successful have always found this, that their triumph has been brief.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Compromise
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If you are not very clever, you should be conciliatory.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Consistency
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A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Criticism
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It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Deception/Lying
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There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Often attributed to Mark Twain; Quoted in Mark Twain, Autobiography, ch. 29, (1924), his exact words were:
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Despair
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Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Determination
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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.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Dissent
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No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Doubt
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Despair is the conclusion of fools.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Duty
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Duty cannot exist without faith.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Economics
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There can be economy only where there is efficiency.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Education
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On the education of the people of this country the fate of the country depends.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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There is no education like adversity.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Enthusiasm
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The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Equality
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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.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Evolution
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The question is this -- Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Expectation
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What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Everything comes if a man will only wait.
-Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred (bk. IV, ch. VIII)
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Facts
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As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Fame
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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.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Fate & Destiny
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We make our fortunes and we call them fate.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Friends
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The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Genius
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Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Genius, when young, is divine.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Government
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The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.
-Benjamin Disraeli, Lothair--General Preface
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Greatness & Great Things
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Man is only truly great when he acts from his passions.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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A great person is one who affects the mind of their generation.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Grief, Grieving
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Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Happiness
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Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Health
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The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Heroes/Heroism
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The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Honesty
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Frank and explicit--that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Humanity
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The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Ideas
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He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Ignorance & Stupidity
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To be conscience that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Inspirational
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Had it not been for you, I should have remained what I was when we first met, a prejudiced, narrow-minded being, with contracted sympathies and false knowledge, wasting my life on obsolete trifles, and utterly insensible to the privilege of living in this wondrous age of change and progress.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Justice
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Justice is truth in action.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Law
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When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Leadership
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No affection and a great brain, these are the people to command the world.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Learning
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A university should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Legacy
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Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Liberalism
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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.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Life
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Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Love
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The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Management
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To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Mankind, Man
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Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.
-Benjamin Disraeli, Vivian Grey
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Manners
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Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Marriage
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It destroys one's nerve to be amiable every day to the same human being.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Mediocrity
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Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Little things affect little minds.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Mistakes
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He has not a single redeeming defect.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Morals
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We moralize among ruins.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Nation, Nationality, Nationalism
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Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Great countries are those that produce great people.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Nature
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Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Neighbors
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In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbors. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves; modern society acknowledges no neighbor.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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News
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News is that which comes from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point on the compass, then it is a class ; publication and not news.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Opinion
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Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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What we call public opinion is generally public sentiment.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Opportunity
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Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Parliament
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You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Patriotism
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Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Peace
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That doctrine of peace at any price has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in this country. It has occasioned more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties and the welfare of the world.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Personality
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A person's fate is their own temper.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Plagiarism
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Plagiarists at least have the quality of preservation.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Planning
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I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Pleasure
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Amusement to an observing mind is study.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Politics
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The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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A Conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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A majority is always better than the best repartee.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Finality is not the language of politics.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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In politics, nothing is contemptible.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Power
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Power has only one duty --to secure the social welfare of the People.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Purpose
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Nothing can resist the human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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The secret to success is constancy to purpose.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Quotations
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When we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, and opening quotation is a symphony precluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Reading
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Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Reason
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It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Religion
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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.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Revolution
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I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Royalty, Kings, Queens
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Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Science
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The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Shyness
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How very seldom do you encounter in the world a man of great abilities, acquirements, experience, who will unmask his mind, unbutton his brains, and pour forth in careless and picturesque phrase all the results of his studies and observation; his knowledge of men, books, and nature. On the contrary, if a man has by any chance an original idea, he hoards it as if it were old gold; and rather avoids the subject with which he is most conversant, from fear that you may appropriate his best thoughts.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Silence
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When little is done, little is said; silence is the mother of truth.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Silence is the mother of truth.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Sincerity
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What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Frank and explicit -- that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Candor is the brightest gem of criticism.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Speeches (oratory)
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The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Storytelling
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When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Success & Failure
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The secret of success is consistency of purpose.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Success is the child of audacity.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Suffering
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It is the lot of man to suffer.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Tact, Tactfulness
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Perseverance and tact are the two great qualities most valuable for all those who would climb, but especially for those who have to step out of the crowd.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Without tact you can learn nothing. Tact teaches you when to be silent. Inquirers who are always questioning never learn anything.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Thought
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Nurture your mind with great thoughts.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Tolerance
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Travel teaches tolerance.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Trade (import / export)
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Protection is not a principle but an expedient.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Tradition
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A precedent embalms a principle.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Travel
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Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Truth
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Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for truth.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Understanding
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There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Unity
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Damn your principals. Stick to your Party!
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Value
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Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Will, Willpower
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Nothing can withstand the power of the human will if it is willing to stake its very existence to the extent of its purpose.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Worry
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Worry -- a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Youth
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The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Youth is the trustee of prosperity.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Books by and about Benjamin Disraeli
