Frases de Benjamin Disraeli

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“La juventud es un disparate; la madurez, una lucha; la vejez, un remordimiento.”

“Hay personas divertidas que no interesan, y personas interesantes que no divierten.”

“Hay personas silenciosas que son mucho más interesantes que los mejores oradores.”

“La alegría del primer amor es nuestro desconocimiento de que puede tener fin.”

“Nada revela tan fiablemente el carácter de una persona como su voz.”

“La variedad es la madre del placer.”

“Nunca discutir. Si en sociedad alguna persona difiere de tu modo de pensar, cambia de conversación.”

“¿Sabéis quienes son los críticos? Aquellos que fracasaron en la literatura y en las artes.”

“La sabiduría de los sabios y la experiencia de los siglos pueden conservarse en citas.”

“Lo mejor que podemos hacer por otro no es sólo compartir con él nuestras riquezas, sino mostrarles las suyas y descubrir la nuestra.”

“No hay otra educación como la adversidad.”

“Piensa antes de hacer, pero no te pases tanto tiempo pensando que no llegues a empezar.”

“Triunfar tarde no es triunfar: es alcanzar al mismo tiempo la inmortalidad y la muerte.”

“Mi idea de una persona agradable es una persona que está de acuerdo conmigo”

“En política, los experimentos significan revolución.”

“La ciencia es para el mundo moderno lo que el arte fue para el antiguo.”

“La fortuna, el éxito, la gloria el poder pueden aumentar la felicidad, pero no darla. Sólo el cariño da la dicha.”

“La vida es demasiado corta para que la hagamos mezquina.”

“Los críticos son los hombres que han fracasado en la literatura y las artes.”

“Los viajes enseñan la tolerancia.”

“El que ostenta el poder es siempre impopular.”

“El hombre no es el creador de las circunstancias, más bien las circunstancias crean al hombre.”

“Como puedes ver, mi querido Coningsby, el mundo está gobernado por personajes muy distintos a los que se imaginan aquellos que no están detrás del telón.”

“Hasta en el exceso existe una moderación.”

“La ignorancia nunca da por terminadas las cuestiones.”

“La magia del primer amor consiste en nuestra ignorancia de que pueda tener fin.”

“La moderación es también un exceso.”

“Las torpezas de la juventud son preferibles a los aciertos de la vejez.”

“Lo más importante en la vida, después de saber cuándo aprovechar una oportunidad, es saber cuándo prescindir de una ventaja.”

“Lo que prevemos, raramente ocurre; lo que menos esperamos es lo que sucede generalmente.”

“Lo verdaderamente mágico de nuestro primer amor es la absoluta ignorancia de que alguna vez ha de terminar.”

“Los experimentos en política significan revoluciones.”

“Los jóvenes de una nación son los depositarios de la posteridad.”

“Ningún gobierno puede mantenerse sólido mucho tiempo sin una oposición temible.”

“No siempre la acción tiene felicidad, pero no hay acción sin felicidad.”

“Ser consciente de la propia ignorancia es un gran paso hacia el saber.”

“Todas las mujeres deberían casarse, los hombres no.”

“El secreto del éxito es la constancia en el propósito.”

“El éxito es hijo de la audacia.”

“Como todos los grandes viajeros, yo he visto más cosas de las que recuerdo, y recuerdo más cosas de las que he visto.”

“Alimentad el espíritu con grandes pensamientos. La fe en un heroísmo hace los héroes.”

“I don't wish to go down to posterity talking bad grammar.”

“Something has risen up in this country as fatal in the political world as it has been in the landed world of Ireland—we have a great Parliamentary middleman. It is well known what a middleman is; he is a man who bamboozles one party, and plunders the other, till, having obtained a position to which he is not entitled, he cries out, "Let us have no party questions, but fixity of tenure."”

“The noble lord in this case, as in so many others, first destroys his opponent, and then destroys his own position afterwards. The noble lord is the Prince Rupert of parliamentary discussion: his charge is resistless, but when he returns from the pursuit he always finds his camp in the possession of the enemy.”

“The disappointment of manhood succeeds to the delusion of youth: let us hope that the heritage of old age is not despair.”

“Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.”

“He told Lord Esher that, in talking with the Queen, he observed a simple rule: "I never deny; I never contradict; I sometimes forget."”

“I have that confidence in the common sense, I will say the common spirit of our countrymen, that I believe they will not long endure this huckstering tyranny of the Treasury Bench—these political pedlars that bought their party in the cheapest market, and sold us in the dearest. I know, Sir, that there are many who believe that the time is gone by when one can appeal to those high and honest impulses that were once the mainstay and the main element of the English character. I know, Sir, that we appeal to a people debauched by public gambling—stimulated and encouraged by an inefficient and shortsighted Minister. I know that the public mind is polluted with economic fancies; a depraved desire that the rich may become richer without the interference of industry and toil. I know, Sir, that all confidence in public men is lost. But, Sir, I have faith in the primitive and enduring elements of the English character. It may be vain now, in the midnight of their intoxication, to tell them that there will be an awakening of bitterness; it may be idle now, in the spring-tide of their economic frenzy, to warn them that there may be an ebb of trouble. But the dark and inevitable hour will arrive. Then, when their spirit is softened by misfortune, they will recur to those principles that made England great, and which, in our belief, can alone keep England great. Then, too, perchance they may remember, not with unkindness, those who, betrayed and deserted, were neither ashamed nor afraid to struggle for the "good old cause"—the cause with which are associated principles the most popular, sentiments the most entirely national—the cause of labour—the cause of the people—the cause of England.”

“The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.”

“There is no subject in which I have taken a deeper interest than the condition of the working classes. Long before what is called the 'condition of the people question' was discussed in the House of Commons, I had employed my pen on the subject. I had long been aware that there was something rotten in the core of our social system. I had seen that while immense fortunes were accumulating, while wealth was increasing to a superabundance, and while Great Britain was cited throughout Europe as the most prosperous nation in the world, the working classes, the creators of wealth, were steeped in the most abject poverty and gradually sinking into the deepest degradation.”

“I confess I am inclined to believe that an English gentleman—born to business, managing his own estate, administering the affairs of his county, mixing with all classes of his fellowmen, now in the hunting field, now in the railway direction, unaffected, un-ostentatious, proud of his ancestors, if they have contributed to the greatness of our common country—is, on the whole, more likely to form a senator agreeable to the English opinion and English taste than any substitute that has yet been produced.”

“Variety is the mother of Enjoyment.”

“Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.”

“The present state of affairs makes me tremble. Old England seems to be tumbling to pieces. I believe that if Constantinople were occupied by a foreign Power to-morrow, we should not stir a foot. Could we? With Ireland in revolution, S. Africa in rebellion, and the Radicals and Jacobins in England so intent on the destruction of the landed interest which is the backbone of the State, that no one will spare any energies to external dangers and disgraces. I never thought that in my time it could come to this!”

“Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.”

“The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.”

“It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.”

“Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.”

“First, without reference to England, looking at all countries, I say that it is the first duty of the Minister, and the first interest of the State, to maintain a balance between the two great branches of national industry; that is a principle which has been recognised by all great Ministers for the last two hundred years…Why we should maintain that balance between the two great branches of national industry, involves political considerations—social considerations, affecting the happiness, prosperity, and morality of the people, as well as the stability of the State. But I go further; I say that in England we are bound to do more—I repeat what I have repeated before, that in this country there are special reasons why we should not only maintain the balance between the two branches of our national industry, but why we should give a preponderance…to the agricultural branch; and the reason is, because in England we have a territorial Constitution. We have thrown upon the land the revenues of the Church, the administration of justice, and the estate of the poor; and this has been done, not to gratify the pride, or pamper the luxury of the proprietors of the land, but because, in a territorial Constitution, you, and those whom you have succeeded, have found the only security for self-government—the only barrier against that centralising system which has taken root in other countries.”

“Diligence is the mother of good fortune.”

“In the character of the victim [Lincoln], and even in the accessories of his last moments, there is something so homely and innocent that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy—it touches the heart of nations and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind.”

“King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.”

“It is only by the amplification of titles that you can often touch and satisfy the imagination of nations; and that is an element which Governments must not despise.”

“It cannot be denied that a state of great national prosperity is quite consistent and compatible with legislation in favour of the protection of native industry. That proposition, years ago, was denied; but with the experience we have had of France and the United States of America—the two most flourishing communities probably in existence—it is now incontestable. Well, my lords, many years ago—nearly 40—this country, which no one can say for a moment did not flourish with the old system of protection, deemed it necessary to revise the principles upon which its commerce was conducted…The scheme that was adopted was this—that we were to fight hostile tariffs with free imports. I was among those who looked upon that policy with fear. I believed it to be one very perilous.”

“Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845).”

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

“The microcosm of a public school.”

“Duty cannot exist without faith.”

“Her Majesty's new Ministers proceeded in their career like a body of men under the influence of some deleterious drug. Not satiated with the spoilation and anarchy of Ireland, they began to attack every institution and every interest, every class and calling in the country…As time advanced it was not difficult to perceive that extravagance was being substituted for energy by the Government. The unnatural stimulus was subsiding. Their paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench the Ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea.”

“What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.”