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.”

“The danger at such a moment is that designing politicians may take advantage of such sublime sentiments and may apply them for the furtherance of their sinister ends. I do not think there is any language which can denounce too strongly conduct of this description. He who at such a moment would avail himself of such a commanding sentiment in order to obtain his own individual ends, suggesting a course which he may know to be injurious to the interests of the country, and not favourable to the welfare of mankind, is a man whose conduct no language can too strongly condemn. He outrages the principle of patriotism, which is the soul of free communities. He does more—he influences in the most injurious manner the common welfare of humanity. Such conduct, if it be pursued by any man at this moment, ought to be indignantly reprobated by the people of England; for, in the general havoc and ruin which it may bring about, it may, I think, be fairly described as worse than any of those Bulgarian atrocities which now occupy attention.”

“Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.”

“London is a modern Babylon.”

“It is the initial letters of the four points of the compass that make the word "news," and he must understand that news is that which collies from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point of the compass, then it is a class publication, and not news.”

“His Christianity was muscular.”

“Nature is more powerful than education; time will develop everything.”

“The Services in war time are fit only for desperadoes but, in peace, are fit only for fools.”

“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.”

“Amusement to an observing mind is study.”

“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 that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.”

“I rather like bad wine," said Mr. Mountchesney; "one gets so bored with good wine.”

“An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen.”

“I think the author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.”

“A series of congratulatory regrets.”

“The movement of the middle classes for the abolition of slavery was virtuous, but it was not wise. It was an ignorant movement. It showed a want of knowledge both of the laws of commerce and the stipulations of treaties; and it has alike ruined the colonies and aggravated the slave trade…The history of the abolition of slavery by the English and its consequences, would be a narrative of ignorance, injustice, blundering, waste, and havoc, not easily paralleled in the history of mankind.”

“You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public men.”

“When a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire.”

“I say that there are two systems of policy to apply to the management of what is commonly called the Eastern question, but which resolves itself into the geographical question, namely, the possession of that site which commands the empire of the world—the city of Constantinople. There is that school of opinions which I call British opinions, advocated by the noble Lord the Leader of this House (Lord J. Russell) and the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Viscount Palmerston), who believe in the vitality of Turkey, that it may remain an independent and even a progressive country, and form a powerful and sufficient barrier against the encroachment of Russia. There is the other school, which I call the school of Russian polities, that believes that Turkey is exhausted; that all we can do is, by gradually enfranchising the Christian population, to prevent, when its fall takes place, perfect anarchy, and contemplates the possibility of Russia occupying the Bosphorus.”

“Man is not a rational animal. He is only truly good or great when he acts from passion.”

“The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.”

“Beware of endeavouring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed: these are fearful odds.”

“Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible, that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orator really did lose his virginity.”

“In the great struggle between popular principles and liberal opinions, which is the characteristic of our age, I hope ever to be found on the side of the people, and of the Institutions, of England. It is our Institutions that have made us free, and can alone keep us so; by the bulwark which they offer to the insidious encroachments of a convenient, yet enervating, system of centralisation, which, if left unchecked, will prove fatal to the national character.”

“Now I must tell that nothing will induce me to support the 3 F's—three fiddlesticks. During a long parliamentary life, and long before I was in Parliament, I have been profoundly convinced, that the greatness and character of this country depended on our landed tenure. All the rest, I look upon, and have ever looked upon, as "leather and prunella". I fear the pass is sold… I have formally, and even solemnly, warned the house in wh[ich] I now sit, that the landed system of this country would be attacked and invaded by the revolutionary party.”

“That is an apology, not an explanation; and apologies only account for that which they do not alter.”

“This is the third time that, in the course of six years, during which I have had the lead of the Opposition in the House of Commons, I have stormed the Treasury Benches: twice, fruitlessly, the third time with a tin kettle to my tail which rendered the race hopeless. You cannot, therefore, be surprised, that I am a little wearied of these barren victories, which like Alma, Inkerman, and Balaclava, may be glorious but are certainly nothing more.”

“That is the fourth course, which in future I trust the right hon. Gentleman (Sir R. Peel) will not forget. The right hon. Gentleman tells us to go back to precedents; with him a great measure is always founded on a small precedent. He traces the steam-engine always back to the tea-kettle. His precedents are generally tea-kettle precedents.”

“Time is the great physician.”

“The democracy of America must not be confounded with the democracies of old Europe. It is not the scum of turbulent cities, nor is it a mere section of an excited middle class speculating in shares and calling it progress. It is a territorial democracy, if I may use that epithet without offending hon. Gentlemen opposite. Aristotle, who has taught us most of the wise things we know, never said a wiser thing than that the cultivators of the soil are the class least inclined to sedition and to violent courses.”