Isaac D'Israeli Quotes

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

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

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.

One may quote till one compiles.

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

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

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.

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

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

There is a society in the deepest solitude.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Candour is the brightest gem of criticism.

The Self-Educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Those who never quote, in return are never quoted.

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

Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers.

A poet is a painter of the soul.