This book is an anthology of 80quotes from Benjamin Disraeli and 59 selected facts about Benjamin Disraeli. His family was of Sephardic Jewish Italian mercantile background. All Disraeli's grandparents and great grandparents were born in Italy. His grandfather, Benjamin, moved to England from Venice in 1748. He was close to his sister and on affectionate but more distant terms with his surviving brothers. His novel Venetia, a romance based on the characters of Shelley and Byron, was written quickly to raise much-needed money. In 1839 Disraeli married Mary Anne Lewis, the widow of Wyndham Lewis. Twelve years Disraeli's senior, Mary Lewis had a substantial income of £5,000 a year. "Dizzy married me for my money," his wife said later, "But, if he had the chance again, he would marry me for love." Disraeli's last completed novels were Lothair (1870) and Endymion (1880). Disraeli’s nick­name was “Dizzy”. Disraeli is considered to be the pioneer of the political novel. PM for almost 7 years, he initiated a wide range of legislation to improve educational opportunities and the life of working people. Disraeli became Prime Minister once again in 1874, aged 70. He was the first British Prime Minister of Jewish descent. On his deathbed, he is reported to have said: “I had rather live but I am not afraid to die”. He died 76 years old and was buried at Hughenden parish church in Buckinghamshire. “The secret to success is constancy of purpose.” “Everything comes if a man will only wait.” “How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.” “Justice is truth in action.” “Life is too short to be small.” “Little things affect little minds.” “Silence is the mother of truth.” “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” “Man is only great when he acts from passion.”

1. Benjamin Disraeli: Life & Words
By Ann Kannings
First Edition
Copyright © 2014 by Ann Kannings
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Benjamin Disraeli: Life & Words
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Foreword

2. “I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best."
This book is an anthology of 80quotes from Benjamin Disraeli and 59 selected facts about
Benjamin Disraeli.
His family was of Sephardic Jewish Italian mercantile background.
All Disraeli's grandparents and great grandparents were born in Italy.
His grandfather, Benjamin, moved to England from Venice in 1748.

3. He was close to his sister and on affectionate but more distant terms with his surviving brothers.
His novel Venetia, a romance based on the characters of Shelley and Byron, was written quickly
to raise much-needed money.
In 1839 Disraeli married Mary Anne Lewis, the widow of Wyndham Lewis. Twelve years
Disraeli's senior, Mary Lewis had a substantial income of £5,000 a year. "Dizzy married me for
my money," his wife said later, "But, if he had the chance again, he would marry me for love."
Disraeli's last completed novels were Lothair (1870) and Endymion (1880).
Disraeli’s nickname was “Dizzy”.
Disraeli is considered to be the pioneer of the political novel.
PM for almost 7 years, he initiated a wide range of legislation to improve educational
opportunities and the life of working people.
Disraeli became Prime Minister once again in 1874, aged 70.
He was the first British Prime Minister of Jewish descent.
On his deathbed, he is reported to have said: “I had rather live but I am not afraid to die”.
He died 76 years old and was buried at Hughenden parish church in Buckinghamshire.
“The secret to success is constancy of purpose.”
“Everything comes if a man will only wait.”
“How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.”
“Justice is truth in action.”
“Life is too short to be small.”
“Little things affect little minds.”
“Silence is the mother of truth.”
“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”
“Man is only great when he acts from passion.”
His Words
“The secret to success is constancy of purpose.”
“Everything comes if a man will only wait.”
“How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.”
“Justice is truth in action.”
“Life is too short to be small.”
“Little things affect little minds.”
“Silence is the mother of truth.”
“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”

4. “Man is only great when he acts from passion.”
“When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.”
“Where knowledge ends, religion begins.”
“When I want to read a good book, I write one.”
“Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age regret.”
“A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some
unspeakable disease.' That depends, Sir,' said Disraeli, 'whether I embrace your policies or your
mistress.”
“All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil.”
“An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her
own children.”
“As a rule, he or she who has the most information will have the greatest success in life.”
“Books are companions even if you don't open them.”
“But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.”
“Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.”
“Do not read history. Read biography for it is life without theory.”
“Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.”
“Every woman should marry ... and no man.”
“Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.”
“Grief is the agony of an instant: the indulgence of grief is the blunder of life.”
“He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.”
“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that
is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the
passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.”
“I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.”
“I feel a very unusual sensation - if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.”

5. “I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?”
“If Gladstone fell in the Thames, that would be a misfortune. But if someone fished him out
again, that would be a calamity. ”
“Ignorance never settles a question.”
“It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.”
“It has been my lot to have found myself in many distant lands. I have never been in one without
finding a Scotchman, and I never found a Scotchman who was not head of the poll.”
“It is well-known what a middleman is; he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the
other.”
“Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have
seen.”
“Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men.”
“Man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free
agents, and man is more powerful than matter.”
“Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.”
“My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.”
“Never apologize for showing feelings. Remember when you do, you apologize for the truth.”
“Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally
create ourselves.”
“Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.”
“One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in
resolving a situation than its frank admission.”
“Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation”
“Political life must be taken as you find it.”
“Read no history - nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.”
“Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.”
“Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you.”

6. “Success is the child of audacity.”
“Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours”
“The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.”
“The canter is a cure for every evil.”
“The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has
established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.”
“The expected always happens”
“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his
own.”
“The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.”
“The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.”
“The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”
“The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations.”
“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not
behind the scenes.”
“The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.”
“There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
“There is no education like adversity.”
“Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.”
“Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.”
“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge”
“To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”
“Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.”
“We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.”
“What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.”

7. “What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.”
“What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history”
“When I want to read a novel, I write one.”
“Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has
been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the
nursery.”
“You asked me where I generally lived. In my workshop in the mornings and always in the
library in the evening. Books are companions even if you don’t open them.”
Facts of Life
Disraeli was born on 21 December 1804 at 6 King's Road, Bedford Row, Bloomsbury, London.
Disraeli was the second child and eldest son of Isaac Disraeli, a literary critic and historian, and
Maria (Miriam), née Basevi.
His family was of Sephardic Jewish Italian mercantile background.
All Disraeli's grandparents and great grandparents were born in Italy.
His grandfather, Benjamin, moved to England from Venice in 1748.
His father's family was of grand Spanish and Venetian descent.
On Disraeli's mother's side, in which he took no interest, there were some highly distinguished
forebears.
Disraeli's siblings were Sarah (1802–1859), Naphtali (born and died 1807), Ralph (1809–1898),
and James ("Jem") (1813–1868).
He was close to his sister and on affectionate but more distant terms with his surviving brothers.
From the age of about six he was a day boy at a dame school in Islington.
At the age of eight he was sent as a boarder to the Rev John Potticary's school at Blackheath.
His father renounced Judaism and had the four children baptised into the Church of England in
July and August 1817.
His father had never taken religion very seriously, but had remained a conforming member of the
Bevis Marks Synagogue.

8. His grandfather, the elder Benjamin, was a prominent and devout member of the Bevis Marks
Synagogue.
His father's friend Sharon Turner, a solicitor, stood as godfather when Benjamin was baptised,
aged twelve, on 31 July 1817.
Conversion to Christianity enabled Disraeli to contemplate a career in politics.
It is not known whether Disraeli formed any ambition for a parliamentary career at the time of his
baptism, but there is no doubt that he bitterly regretted his parents' decision not to send him to
Winchester College. As one of the great public schools of England, Winchester consistently
provided recruits to the political élite.
His two younger brothers were sent to Winchester College, and it is not clear why Isaac Disraeli
chose to send his eldest son to a much less prestigious school. The boy evidently held his mother
responsible for the decision.
The school chosen for him was run by Eliezer Cogan at Higham Hill in Walthamstow. He began
there in the autumn term of 1817; he later recalled his education: "my education was severely
classical… puerile pedantry."
In November 1821, shortly before his seventeenth birthday, Disraeli was articled as a clerk to a
firm of solicitors—Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse and Hunt—in the City of London.
T. F. Maples was not only the young Disraeli's employer and friend of his father's, but also his
prospective father-in-law: Disraeli's father and Maples entertained the possibility that the latter's
only daughter might be a suitable match for Benjamin. A friendship developed, but there was no
romance.
The year after joining Maples's firm, Benjamin changed his surname from D'Israeli to Disraeli; it
was to avoid being confused with his father. Disraeli's sister and brothers adopted the new
version of the name; his father and his mother retained the older form.
The bursting of the mining bubble was ruinous for Disraeli. By June 1825 he and his business
partners had lost £7,000. Disraeli could not pay off the last of his debts from this debacle until
1849.
Disraeli turned to writing, motivated by his desperate need for money. There was a vogue for
what was called "silver-fork fiction"—novels depicting aristocratic life, usually by anonymous
authors, read avidly by the aspirational middle classes. Disraeli's first novel was Vivian Grey,
published anonymously in four volumes in 1826–27. Disraeli, then just twenty-three, did not
move in high society, as the numerous solecisms in his book made obvious. Reviewers were
sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. In later editions Disraeli made
many changes, softening his satire, but the damage to his reputation proved long-lasting
The financial failure and personal criticism that Disraeli suffered in 1825 and 1826 was probably

9. the trigger for a serious nervous crisis affecting him over the next four years.
Together with his sister's fiancé, William Meredith, Disraeli travelled widely in southern Europe
and beyond in 1830–31. The trip was financed partly by his high society novel, The Young Duke,
written in 1829–30.
Disraeli's novel Contarini Fleming (1832) was avowedly a self-portrait. It is subtitled "a
psychological autobiography", and depicts the conflicting elements of its hero's character: the
duality of northern and Mediterranean ancestry, the dreaming artist and the bold man of action.
The book ends on a political note, setting out Europe's progress "from feudal to federal
principles".
Disraeli's novel The Wondrous Tale of Alroy (1833) portrayed the problems of a medieval Jew in
deciding between a small, exclusively Jewish state and a large empire embracing all.
In 1834 Disraeli was introduced to the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, by Henrietta
Sykes, wife of Sir Francis Sykes. She was having an affair with Lyndhurst, and began another
with Disraeli. Disraeli and Lyndhurst took an immediate liking to each other. Lyndhurst was an
indiscreet gossip with a fondness for intrigue; this appealed greatly to Disraeli, who became his
secretary and go-between.
In April 1835 Disraeli fought a by-election at Taunton as a Tory.
Disraeli's public exchanges with the Irish MP Daniel O'Connel, extensively reproduced in The
Times, included a demand for a duel with the 60-year-old O'Connell's son.
His Vindication of the English Constitution, was published in December 1835. It was couched in
the form of an open letter to Lyndhurst, and encapsulates a political philosophy that Disraeli
adhered to for the rest of his life. Its themes were the value of benevolent aristocratic
government, a loathing of political dogma, and the modernisation of Tory policies.
In 1836 Disraeli wrote a series of satires on politicians of the day, which he published in The
Times under the pen-name "Runnymede".
He was elected to the exclusively Tory Carlton Club in 1836, and was also taken up by the party's
leading hostess, Lady Londonderry.
In June 1837 William IV died, the young Queen Victoria, his niece, succeeded him, and
parliament was dissolved. On the recommendation of the Carlton Club, Disraeli was adopted as a
Tory parliamentary candidate at the ensuing General Election.
In the election in July 1837 Disraeli won a seat in the House of Commons as one of two
members, both Tory, for the constituency of Maidston.
In 1837 Disraeli published a novel, Henrietta Temple, which was a love story and social comedy,
drawing on his affair with Henrietta Sykes. He had broken off the relationship in late 1836,
distraught that she had taken yet another lover.

10. His novel Venetia, a romance based on the characters of Shelley and Byron, was written quickly
to raise much-needed money.[
Disraeli made his maiden speech in Parliament on 7 December 1837. He followed O'Connell,
whom he sharply criticised for the latter's "long, rambling, jumbling, speech".[75] He was
shouted down by O'Connell's supporters.
In 1839 Disraeli married Mary Anne Lewis, the widow of Wyndham Lewis. Twelve years
Disraeli's senior, Mary Lewis had a substantial income of £5,000 a year. "Dizzy married me for
my money," his wife said later, "But, if he had the chance again, he would marry me for love."
Although a Tory (or Conservative, as some in the party now called themselves) Disraeli was
sympathetic to some of the aims of Chartism, and argued for an alliance between the landed
aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new
industrialists in the middle class.
After Disraeli won widespread acclaim in March 1842 for worsting the formidable Lord
Palmerston in debate, he was taken up by a small group of idealistic new Tory MPs, with whom
he formed the Young England group. They held that the landed interests should use their power
to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen.
Disraeli's last completed novels were Lothair (1870) and Endymion (1880).
Disraeli’s nickname was “Dizzy”.
Disraeli is considered to be the pioneer of the political novel.
His title was 1st Earl of Beaconsfield.
Disraeli’s his career was marked with criticism tainted with anti-Semitism including cartoons,
nicknames (“Shylock”, “abominable Jew”) as well as being portrayed in an act of ritually
murdering the infant Britannia.
PM for almost 7 years, he initiated a wide range of legislation to improve educational
opportunities and the life of working people.
After Derby’s resignation in 1868, Queen Victoria invited Disraeli to become Prime Minister,
and they soon struck up a remarkable rapport thanks to Disraeli’s charm and skilful flattery. He
was later to tell a colleague, who had asked for advice on how to handle the Queen, “first of all,
remember she is woman”.
Disraeli became Prime Minister once again in 1874, aged 70.
He was the first British Prime Minister of Jewish descent.
On his deathbed, he is reported to have said: “I had rather live but I am not afraid to die”.

11. He died 76 years old and was buried at Hughenden parish church in Buckinghamshire.
Disraeli has a memorial in Westminster Abbey. This monument was erected by the nation on the
motion of Gladstone in his memorial speech on Disraeli in the House of Commons.