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Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Collected From His Writings and Speeches
Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli Collected From His Writings and Speeches Author:Benjamin Disraeli General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1881 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: Books. Bookworms do not make Chancellors of State. -- (' Lady Montfort') Endymion. Without books the discoveries of science, the inventions of art, the grand pedigrees and noble precedents of the intellectual development of man, would have no record ; none of those maxims and household words which illustrate, animate, adorn, and cheer life, would exist . Those imaginary characters as they are called, but which are really much more vital and substantial than half our acquaintance, would no longer exist. There would be no Hamlets, no Don Quixotes, no Falstaffs. And therefore I can easily conceive that mankind has instinctively felt how much even those who are unlettered owe to the cultivated record of the impulses of invention and the discoveries of truth. -- Speech at Royal Literary Fund Dinner,. May 6, 1868. Consols at a hundred were the origin of all book societies. -- (' Cleveland ') Vivian Grey. Those that cannot themselves observe, can at least acquire the observation of others. -- (' De Winter') Contarini Fleming. It is difficult to decide which is the most valuable companion to a country eremite at his nightly studies, the volume that keeps him awake, or the one that sets him slumbering. -- Lothair. Books are fatal : they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befel man was the invention of printing. -- (' Mr. Phcebus ') Lothair. A Remarkable Book, ' The Revelations of Chaos.' -- It explains everything, and is written in a very agreeable style. Everything is exp...« less