Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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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 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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Dandies, when first-rate, are generally very agreeable men.
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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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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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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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Of all the conditions to which the heart is subject suspense is one that most gnaws and cankers into the frame. One little month of that suspense, when it involves death, we are told by an eye witness in "Wakefield on the Punishment of Death," is sufficient to plough fixed lines and furrows in a convict of five and twenty,--sufficient, to dash the brown hair with grey, and to bleach the grey to white.
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When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be.
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Faith builds in the dungeon and lazarhouse its sublimest shrines; and up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of heaven, ascends the ladder where the angels glide to and fro,--prayer.
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As the films of clay are removed from our eyes, Death loses the false aspect of the spectre, and we fall at last into its arms as a wearied child upon the bosom of its mother.
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He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite.
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I would rather have five energetic and competent enemies than one fool friend.
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Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea?
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Some have the temperament and tastes of genius, without its creative power. They feel acutely, but express tamely.
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As the excitement of the game increases, prudence is sure to diminish.
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It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything.
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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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Poets alone are sure of immortality; they are the truest diviners of nature.
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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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Revolutions are not made with rosewater.
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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.
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There is a great deal we never think of calling religion that is still fruit unto God, and garnered by Him in the harvest. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, patience, goodness. I affirm that if these fruits are found in any form, whether you show your patience as a woman nursing a fretful child, or as a man attending to the vexing detail of a business, or as a physician following the dark mazes of sickness, or as a mechanic fitting the joints and valves of a locomotive; being honest true besides, you bring forth truth unto God.
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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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Revenge is a common passion; it is the sin of the uninstructed. The savage deems it noble;but the religion of Christ, which is the sublime civilizer, emphatically condemns it. Why? Because religion ever seeks to ennoble man; and nothing so debases him as revenge.