Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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Every man loves and admires his own country because it produced him.
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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.
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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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Fate whirls on the bark, and the rough gale sweeps from the rising tide the lazy calm of thought.
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He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.
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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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In life, as in whist, hope nothing from the way cards may be dealt to you. Play the cards, whatever they be, to the best of your skill.
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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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Fiction may be said to be the caricature of history.
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In all cases of heart-ache, the application of another man's disappointment draws out the pain and allays the irritation.
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A fresh mind keeps the body fresh.
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To how many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith!
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Art itself is essentially ethical; because every true work of art must have a beauty or grandeur of some kind, and beauty and grandeur cannot be comprehended by the beholder except through the moral sentiment. The eye is only a witness; it is not a judge. The mind judges what the eye reports to it; therefore, whatever elevates the moral sentiment to the contemplation of beauty and grandeur is in itself ethical.
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Whenever man commits a crime heaven finds a witness.
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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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We must remember how apt man is to extremes--rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust.
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He that fancies himself very enlightened, because he sees the deficiencies of others, may be very ignorant, because he has not studied his own.
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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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Fate! There is no fate. Between the thought and the success God is the only agent. Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.
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Ambition has no rest.
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The most delicate beauty in the mind of women is, and ever must be, an independence of artificial stimulants for content. It is not so with men. The links that bind men to capitals belong to the golden chain of civilization,--the chain which fastens all our destinies to the throne of Jove. And hence the larger proportion of men in whom genius is pre-eminent have preferred to live in cities, though some of them have bequeathed to us the loveliest pictures of the rural scenes in which they declined to dwell.
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It is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty that Vice can obtain a lodging. When she knocks at your door be able to say: "No room for your ladyship; pass on.
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There is no past, as long as books shall live. Books make the past our heritage and our home.
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The bold sympathize with the bold; and in great hearts, there is always a certain friendship for a gallant foe.