Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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Nothing can constitute good-breeding that has not good-nature for its foundation.
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Though no participator in the joy of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practise toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost.
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Keep unscathed the good name; keep out of peril the honor without which even your battered old soldier who is hobbling into his grave on half-pay and a wooden leg would not change with Achilles.
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Fate laughs at probabilities.
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Fiction may be said to be the caricature of history.
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Say what we will, you may be sure that ambition is an error; its wear and tear of heart are never recompensed, -it steals away the freshness of life, -it deadens its vivid and social enjoyments, -it shuts our souls to our own youth, -and we are old ere we remember that we have made a fever and a labor of our raciest years.
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Each man forms his duty according to his predominant characteristic; the stern require an avenging judge; the gentle, a forgiving father. Just so the pygmies declared that Jove himself was a pygmy.
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The haughty woman who can stand alone, and requires no leaning-place in our hearts, loses the spell of her sex.
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One vice worn out makes us wiser than fifty tutors.
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The bold sympathize with the bold; and in great hearts, there is always a certain friendship for a gallant foe.
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He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.
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Man hazards the condition and loses the virtues of a freeman, in proportion as he accustoms his thoughts to view without anguish or shame, his lapse into the bondage of debtor.
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The fewer blows, the better. Brave men fight if they must; wise men never fight if they can help it.
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When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are.
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It may, indeed, be said that sympathy exists in all minds, as Faraday has discovered that magnetism exists in all metals; but a certain temperature is required to develop the hidden property, whether in the metal or the mind.
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It is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest passions of mean confedes.
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What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labor.
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All doubt is cowardice - all trust is brave.
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We may observe in humorous authors that the faults they chiefly ridicule have often a likeness in themselves. Cervantes had much of the knight-errant in him; Sir George Etherege was unconsciously the Fopling Flutter of his own satire; Goldsmith was the same hero to chambermaids, and coward to ladies that he has immortalized in his charming comedy; and the antiquarian frivolities of Jonathan Oldbuck had their resemblance in Jonathan Oldbuck's creator.
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To the thinker, the most trifling external object often suggests ideas, which, like Homer's chain, extend, link after link, from earth to heaven.
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Julius Caesar owed two millions when he risked the experiment of being general in Gaul. If Julius Caesar had not lived to cross the Rubicon, and pay off his debts, what would his creditors have called Julius Caesar?
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Dandies, when first-rate, are generally very agreeable men.
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Our glories float between the earth and heaven Like clouds which seem pavilions of the sun, And are the playthings of the casual wind.
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The man who wants his wedding garments to suit him must allow plenty of time for the measure.