Statesman · British · 1804 – 1881 · 156 quotes
William Gladstone has not a single redeeming defect.
Benjamin Disraeli
Statesman · British · 1804 – 1881
There can be economy only where there is efficiency.
A majority is always better than the best repartee.
Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.
It is easier to be critical than correct.
Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.
A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.
Worry - a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.
I say that justice is truth in action.
Where knowledge ends, religion begins.
The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.
There is no education like adversity.
Silence is the mother of truth.
We cannot learn men from books.
Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.
Justice is truth in action.
Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.
In politics nothing is contemptible.
The fool wonders, the wise man asks.
I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.
There is no gambling like politics.
Fear makes us feel our humanity.
Duty cannot exist without faith.
As for our majority... one is enough.
Youth is the trustee of prosperity.
Without tact you can learn nothing.
There is moderation even in excess.
Despair is the conclusion of fools.
Little things affect little minds.
Adventures are to the adventurous.
London is a roost for every bird.
Never complain and never explain.
I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.
Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.
Never take anything for granted.
A precedent embalms a principle.
The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.
Genius, when young, is divine.
We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.
London is a modern Babylon.
Travel teaches toleration.
We moralize among ruins.
The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.
A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.
