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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.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
The affections are immortal! They are the sympathies which unite the ceaseless generations.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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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.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
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.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
He that fancies himself very enlightened, because he sees the deficiencies of others, may be very ignorant, because he has not studied his own.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
I did not fall into love - I rose into love.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
There is certainly something of exquisite kindness and thoughtful benevolence in that rarest of gifts,--fine breeding.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
It is the glorious doom of literature that the evil perishes and the good remains.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not, don't. And the advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Ambition has no rest.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Remedy your deficiencies, and your merits will take care of themselves. Every man has in him good and evil. His good is his valiant army, his evil is his corrupt commissariat; reform the commissariat and the army will do its duty.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow,--whether raised at a puppet show, a funeral, or a battle,--is your grandest of levellers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
I have wrought great use out of evil tools.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Nothing but real love--(how rare it is; has one human heart in a million ever known it?) nothing but real love can repay us for the loss of freedom--the cares and fears of poverty--the cold pity of the world that we both despise and respect.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
When the world frowns, we can face it; but let it smile, and we are undone.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially the mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet mood.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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A mind once cultivated will not lie fallow for half an hour.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Poverty has strange bedfellows.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
We must remember how apt man is to extremes--rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
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.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton