Best 63 quotes of Isaac Disraeli on MyQuotes

Isaac Disraeli

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    A poet is a painter of the soul.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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 deliciƦ of literature, that will out-last the fading meteors of his day.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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!

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    Candour is the brightest gem of criticism.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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!

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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!

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    One may quote till one compiles.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    Quotations, like much better things, has its abuses.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

    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.

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    Isaac Disraeli

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

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    Isaac Disraeli

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