Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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Childhood and genius have the same master organ in common - inquisitiveness.
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It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything.
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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.
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To mourn deeply for the death of another loosens from myself the petty desire for, and the animal adherence to life. We have gained the end of the philosopher, and view without shrinking the coffin and the pall.
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Revolutions are not made with rosewater.
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Despair makes victims sometimes victors.
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The worst part of an eminent man's conversation is, nine times out of ten, to be found in that part by which he means to be clever.
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The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.
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When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,--when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,--oh, then diet yourself well on biography,--the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it.
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Earnestness is the best gift of mental power, and deficiency of heart is the cause of many men never becoming great.
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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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In solitude the passions feed upon the heart.
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When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be.
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Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger.
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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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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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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.
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It is a glorious fever, desire to know.
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Whatever you lend let it be your money, and not your name. Money you may get again, and, if not, you may contrive to do without it; name once lost you cannot get again.
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There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.
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Alas! innocence is but a poor substitute for experience.
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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.
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Patience is a good palfrey, and will carry us a long day.
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There is certainly something of exquisite kindness and thoughtful benevolence in that rarest of gifts,--fine breeding.