Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
-
Earnestness is the best gift of mental power, and deficiency of heart is the cause of many men never becoming great.
-
Our very wretchedness grows dear to us when suffering for one we love.
-
A man's heart must be very frivolous if the possession of fame rewards the labor to attain it. For the worst of reputation is that it is not palpable or present - we do not feel or see or taste it.
-
Certain I am that every author who has written a book with earnest forethought and fondly cherished designs will bear testimony to the fact that much which he meant to convey has never been guessed at in any review of his work; and many a delicate beauty of thought, on which he principally valued himself, remains, like the statue of Isis, an image of truth from which no hand lifts the veil.
-
There is no past, as long as books shall live. Books make the past our heritage and our home.
-
Ambition has no rest.
-
Toil to some is happiness, and rest to others. This man can only breathe in crowds, and that man only in solitudes.
-
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.
-
I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child.
-
The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.
-
Poets alone are sure of immortality; they are the truest diviners of nature.
-
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.
-
We must remember how apt man is to extremes--rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust.
-
The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes, and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina.
-
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.
-
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
-
The Italians have voices like peacocks - German gives me a cold in the head - and Russian is nothing but sneezing.
-
Childhood and genius have the same master organ in common - inquisitiveness.
-
Some have the temperament and tastes of genius, without its creative power. They feel acutely, but express tamely.
-
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.
-
Law dies, books never.
-
Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius. They fear lest they should be loved for a quality, and not for themselves.
-
Money never can be well managed if sought solely through the greed of money for its own sake. In all meanness there is a defect of intellect as well as of heart. And even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.
-
A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always renourishing his genius.