Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.
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When the soul communes with itself the lip is silent.
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Master books, but do not let them master you.
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He who esteems trifles for themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher.
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It is the glorious doom of literature that the evil perishes and the good remains.
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Money is a terrible blab; she will betray the secrets of her owner, whatever he do to gag her. His virtues will creep out in her whisper; his vices she will cry aloud at the top of her tongue.
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Birds sing in vain to the ear, flowers bloom in vain to the eye, of mortified vanity and galled ambition. He who would know repose in retirement must carry into retirement his destiny, integral and serene, as the Caesars transported the statue of Fortune into the chamber they chose for their sleep.
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Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
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Remedy your deficiencies,and your merits will take care of themselves.
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Man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater.
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That man will never be a perfect gentleman who lives only with gentlemen. To be a man of the world we must view that world in every grade and in every perspective.
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Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow,--whether raised at a puppet show, a funeral, or a battle,--is your grandest of levellers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.
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Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors.
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The heart of a man's like that delicate weed, / Which requires to be trampled on, boldly indeed / Ere it gives forth the fragrance you wish to extract.
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Philosophy, while it soothes the reason, damps the ambition.
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It is a very high mind to which gratitude is not a painful sensation. If you wish to please, you will find it wiser to receive, solicit even, favors, than accord them; for the vanity of the obligor is always flattered, that of the obligee rarely.
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Fate! There is no fate. Between the thought and the success God is the only agent. Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.
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There is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name, and we call it patience.
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He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.
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Kindness like light speaks in the air it gilds.
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The conscience is the most flexible material in the world. Today you cannot stretch it over a mole hill; while tomorrow it can hide a mountain.
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Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.
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Nothing ages like laziness.
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Ere yet we yearn for what is out of our reach, we are still in the cradle. When wearied out with our yearnings, desire again falls asleep; we are on the death-bed.