Isaac D'Israeli Quotes

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

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

The Plagiarism of orators is the art, or an ingenious and easy mode, which some adroitly employ to change, or disguise, all sorts of speeches of their own composition, or that of other authors, for their pleasure, or their utility; in such a manner that it becomes impossible even for the author himself to recognise his own work, his own genius, and his own style, so skilfully shall the whole be disguised.

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

Candour is the brightest gem of criticism.

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.

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

Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.

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

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.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius-the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

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.

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.

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

Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear.

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.

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

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.

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

The negroes are lovers of ludicrous actions, and hence all their ceremonies seem farcical.

The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle contest.

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.

The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

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

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

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

There is such a thing as literary fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats.

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

The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.

There is an art of reading, an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

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

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.

But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds;

and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses.

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.

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.

The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

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.

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

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.

Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention.

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.

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

Those who never quote, in return are never quoted.

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

Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonize.

To bend and prostrate oneself to express sentiments of respect, appears to be a natural motion.

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!

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

Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers.