Benjamin Disraeli Art Quotations

We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable.

It is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption, although they may be very convenient for gratifying the ambition or the vanity of individuals, have any great effect upon the fortunes or the power of parties. And it is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption are means by which power can either be ob-tained or retained.

England is a domestic country. Here the home is revered and the hearth sacred. The nation is represented by a family,--the Royal family,--and if that family is educated with a sense of responsibility and a sentiment of public duty, it is difficult to exaggerate the salutary influence it may exercise over a nation.

I pride myself in recognizing and upholding ability in every party and wherever I meet it.

In the study of the fine arts, they mutually assist each other.

There are few positions less inspiriting than those of a discomfited party.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

It is well-known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.

Damn your principles! Stick to your party.

There is magic in the memory of schoolboy friendships; it softens the heart, and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart.

O Music! Miraculous art! A blast of thy trumpet and millions rush forward to die; a peal of thy organ and uncounted nations sink down to pray.

What art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern; the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men, the useful has succeeded to the beautiful.

Coquettes are, but too rare. It is a career that requires great abilities, infinite pains, a gay and airy spirit. 'T is the coquette who provides all the amusements,--suggests the riding-party, plans the picnic, gives and guesses charades, acts them. She is the stirring element amid the heavy congeries of social atoms,--the soul of the house, the salt of the banquet.

The art of conversation is to be prompt without being stubborn, to refute without argument, and to clothe great matters in a motley garb.

What we call the heart is a nervous sensation, like shyness, which gradually disappears in society. It is fervent in the nursery, strong in the domestic circle, tumultuous at school.

In art the Greeks were the children of the Egyptians. The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the high powers of that mysterious and imaginative people.

Gentl, I am a party man. I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible. I look upon Parliamentary government as the noblest government in the world, and certainly the one most suited to England.

Party is organized opinion.

Gentlemen, the Tory party, unless it is a national party, is nothing.

The feathered arrow of satire has oft been wet with the heart's blood of its victims.

I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible.

Man is a being born to believe. And if no church comes forward with its title-deeds of truth to guide him, he will find altars and idols in his own heart and his own imagination.

The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.

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.

An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur.

Departure should be sudden.

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.

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.

There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.