Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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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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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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When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are.
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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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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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Writers are the main landmarks of the past.
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The mate for beauty should be a man and not a money chest.
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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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The Italians have voices like peacocks - German gives me a cold in the head - and Russian is nothing but sneezing.
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Bright and illustrious illusions! Who can blame, who laugh at the boy, who not admire and commend him, for that desire of a fame outlasting the Pyramids by which he insensibly learns to live in a life beyond the present, and nourish dreams of a good unattainable by the senses?
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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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A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always renourishing his genius.
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We must remember how apt man is to extremes--rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust.
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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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Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.
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A mind once cultivated will not lie fallow for half an hour.
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All doubt is cowardice - all trust is brave.
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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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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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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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Love is a very contradiction of all the elements of our ordinary nature -- it makes the proud man meek -- the cheerful, sad -- the high-spirited, tame; our strongest resolutions, our hardiest energy fail before it. Believe me, you cannot prophesy of its future effect in a man from any knowledge of his past character.
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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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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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A prudent consideration for Number One.