Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in our room, or get away into the street or the fields; in our earlier years we are still the savages of nature, and we do as the poor brutes do. The wounded stag leaves the herd; and if there is anything on a dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.
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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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I have wrought great use out of evil tools.
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Remedy your deficiencies, and your merits will take care of themselves. Every man has in him good and evil. His good is his valiant army, his evil is his corrupt commissariat; reform the commissariat and the army will do its duty.
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It is the glorious doom of literature that the evil perishes and the good remains.
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A friend who stands with you in pressure is more valuable than a hundred ones who stand with you in pleasure.
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The secret of fashion is to surprise and never to disappoint.
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The food of hope is meditative action.
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Art does not imitate nature, but founds itself on the study of nature, takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz: The mind and soul of man.
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Could we know by what strange circumstances a man's genius became prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills which his father paid for.
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Love is on the verge of hate each time it stoops for pardon.
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A man is already of consequence in the world when it is known that we can implicitly rely upon him. Often I have known a man to be preferred in stations of honor and profit because he had this reputation: When he said he knew a thing, he knew it, and when he said he would do a thing, he did it.
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In the hour of strait and need, we measure men's stature not by the body, but the soul!
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Give, and you may keep your friend it you lose your money; lend, and the chances are that you lose your friend if ever you get back your money.
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Remedy your deficiencies,and your merits will take care of themselves.
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The night is past,-joy cometh with the morrow.
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Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.
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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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But never yet the dog our country fed, Betrayed the kindness or forgot the bread.
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As it has been finely expressed, "Principle is a passion for truth." And as an earlier and homelier writer hath it, "The truths we believe in are the pillars of our world.
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The affections are immortal! They are the sympathies which unite the ceaseless generations.
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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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Woman makes half the sorrows which she boasts the privilege to sooth. Woman consoles us, it is true, while we are young and handsome; when we are old and ugly, woman snubs and scolds us. On the whole, then, woman in this scale, the weed in that. Jupiter! Hang out thy balance, and weigh them both; and if thou give the preference to woman, all I can say is, the next time Juno ruffles thee, O Jupiter, try the weed.
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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.