Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
-
Vanity calculates but poorly on the vanity of others; what a virtue we should distil from frailty, what a world of pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs.
-
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.
-
Death is the only monastery; the tomb is the only cell, and the grave that adjoins the convent is the bitterest mock of its futility.
-
Say what we will, we may be sure that ambition is an error. Its wear and tear on the heart are never recompensed.
-
Art employs method for the symmetrical formation of beauty, as science employs it for the logical exposition of truth; but the mechanical process is, in the last, ever kept visibly distinct, while in the first it escapes from sight amid the shows of color and the curves of grace.
-
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.
-
The mate for beauty should be a man and not a money chest.
-
Debt is to man what the serpent is to the bird; its eye fascinates, its breath poisons, its coil crushes sinew and bone, its jaw is the pitiless grave.
-
Nature never gives to a living thing capacities not particularly meant for its benefit and use. If Nature gives to us capacities to believe that we have a Creator whom we never saw, of whom we have no direct proof, who is kind and good and tender beyond all that we know of kindness and goodness and tenderness on earth, it is because the endowment of capacities to conceive a Being must be for our benefit and use; it would not be for our benefit and use if it were a lie.
-
A prudent consideration for Number One.
-
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.
-
There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate.
-
He that fancies himself very enlightened, because he sees the deficiencies of others, may be very ignorant, because he has not studied his own.
-
In families well ordered, there is always one firm, sweet temper, which controls without seeming to dictate. The Greeks represented Persuasion as crowned.
-
Emulation, even in brutes, is sensitively "nervous." See the tremor of the thoroughbred racer before he starts. The dray-horse does not tremble, but he does not emulate. It is not his work to run a race. Says Marcus Antoninus, "It is all one to a stone whether it be thrown upward or downward." Yet the emulation of a man of genius is seldom with his contemporaries, that is, inwardly in his mind, although outwardly in his act it would seem so. The competitors with whom his secret ambition seems to vie are the dead.
-
The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge.
-
To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: Leave no stone unturned.
-
Fate whirls on the bark, and the rough gale sweeps from the rising tide the lazy calm of thought.
-
To how many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith!
-
The higher the rank the less pretence, because there is less to pretend to.
-
When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be.
-
Tears are akin to prayer - Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears.
-
We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.
-
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?