Date: 1793

"Human nature, like a vast machine, is not to be understood by looking on its superficies, but by dwelling on its minute springs and little wheels."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"A skilful writer of anecdotes, gratifies by suffering us to make something that looks like a discovery of our own; he gives a certain activity to the mind, and the reflections appear to arise from ourselves. He throws unperceivably seeds, and we see those flowers start up, which we believe to be...

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"A few pages of interesting anecdotes, afford ample food for the mind."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"It is curious to observe the first dawn of genius breaking on the mind. Sometimes a man of genius, in his first effusions, is so far from revealing his future powers, that, on the contrary, no reasonable hope can be formed of his success."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"In the violent struggle of his mind, he may give a wrong direction to his talents; as Swift, in two pindaric odes, which have been unfortunately preserved in his works."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"This elevated genius was even denied the satisfaction of embracing his expiring parent; while his dwarfish brother, whose mind must have been as diminutive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned to advantage his philosophic dispositions."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"Their mind is not always prepared to pour forth its burning ideas; it is kindled by the flame which it strikes from the collision of the works of great writers."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"Marville says, that the famous orators in the pulpit and at the bar, of his time, used to read the finest passages of the poets, to germinate those seeds of eloquence which nature had scattered in their souls."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"Milton had perhaps wandered in the fields of fancy, and consoled his blindness with listening to the voice of his nation, that was to have resounded with his name."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"To solace mental fatigue by the amusements of fancy, is no loss of time. Students know how often the eye is busied in wandering over the page, while the mind lies in torpid inactivity; they therefore compute their time, not by the hours consumed in study, but by the real acquisitions they obtain...

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)