Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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I did not fall into love - I rose into love.
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The object of ambition, unlike that of love, never being wholly possessed, ambition is the more durable passion of the two.
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The man who wants his wedding garments to suit him must allow plenty of time for the measure.
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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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Hobbies should be wives, not mistresses. It will not do to have more than one at a time. One hobby leads you out of extravagance; a team of hobbies you cannot drive till you are rich enough to find corn for them all. Few men are rich enough for that.
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When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are.
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Writers are the main landmarks of the past.
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A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always renourishing his genius.
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Bu is a word that cools many a warm impulse, stifles many a kindly thought, puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed. No one would ever love his neighbor as himself if he listened to all the Buts that could be said.
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Toil to some is happiness, and rest to others. This man can only breathe in crowds, and that man only in solitudes.
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The more I think of a people calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most disciplined modes of force, and virtues to which our life, social and political, becomes antagonistic in proportion as our civilisation advances - the more devoutly I pray that ages may yet elapse before there emerge into sunlight our inevitable destroyers.
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Power is so characteristically calm that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.
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There is no policy like politeness; and a good manner is the best thing in the world either to get a good name, or to supply the want of it.
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At court one becomes a sort of human ant eater, and learns to catch one's prey by one's tongue.
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A prudent consideration for Number One.
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The Italians have voices like peacocks - German gives me a cold in the head - and Russian is nothing but sneezing.
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We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.
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Self-confidence is not hope; it is the self-judgment of your own internal forces in their relation to the world without, which results from the failure of many hopes and the non-realization of many fears.
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The mate for beauty should be a man and not a money chest.
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It is noticeable how intuitively in age we go back with strange fondness to all that is fresh in the earliest dawn of youth. If we never cared for little children before, we delight to see them roll in the grass over which we hobble on crutches. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, careworn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn; and feel most delight in the returning spring.
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The distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such an amazing noise about it.
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A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that phantom "opinion" than he should fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the churchyard at dark.
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All doubt is cowardice - all trust is brave.
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To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: Leave no stone unturned.