Customer Reviews

The Sayings of Disraeli

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My friend who was watching the Robert Blake trial on Court TV was asking me what I thought of Robert Blake. The actor who was in the Our Gang movies and also IN COLD BLOOD is a different fellow (I assume)from the editor of this charming Victorian keepsake. Disraeli however, as it turns out, shares much in common with the famous former child star: they both have quite a raucous sense of humor, they love birds (remember the cockatoo in BARETTA that sat on Blake's shoulder, always cracking wise?) and they believe in the rights of the little people. Both of them are iconoclasts, and rather short.

Among the grest quotations that will catch your eye is this one, which has been quoted so often many people think it was Churchill who said it, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

He also said that you can get a man to listen for hours if you talk to him about--himself.

In that vein, Disraeli had many quips about the aghe-old propensity of men to listen to themselves act smart. Like Charlie Chan he said, "Wise men ask for reasons, the fool wonders." Rodgers and Hammerstein knew this quote, and turned it on its head for one of their most enduring song, "Some Enchanted Evening," where Ezio Pinza advised, "Fools give you reasons, wise men never try."

Blake knows his stuff and has given us a bumper crop of Disraelisms that will have you pounding the floor with hilarity and shaking your head with rueful laughter.

It is Disraeli, and the contents are wonderful. But the number of entries, versus the number of speeches and the words upon words of the novels... I expected more entries. This is no more than a pamphlet. A good one.