Daily Inspiration Quote by Benjamin Disraeli

Flattery, Disraeli suggests, is not a social nicety but a lubricant for power, and royalty is the kind of machinery that demands gallons of it. The line lands because it plays court etiquette as tradecraft: you do not sprinkle praise, you plaster it on. That “trowel” image is doing more than comedy. It turns deference into masonry, implying that monarchic authority is partly built, maintained, and repaired through performance. Compliment becomes a material you apply to keep the structure intact.

Coming from Disraeli, this is less a cheap joke than a field report from the heart of Victorian politics, where the crown still carried immense symbolic weight and where access - to the sovereign, to patronage, to legitimacy - could hinge on tone as much as policy. As a politician who cultivated Queen Victoria while also navigating party warfare and a widening electorate, Disraeli understood that monarchy worked as theatre and that theatre had stage directions. The court expects homage; the savvy operator delivers it with a knowing wink.

The subtext is mildly cynical but not nihilistic. Disraeli isn’t condemning flattery as moral rot so much as acknowledging it as currency in a hierarchy that runs on ritual. There’s also a democratic sting: if “everyone” likes flattery, the difference with royalty is scale, not nature. Kings and queens are not above human vanity; they’re simply surrounded by professionals trained to monetize it.