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Let youth cherish sleep, the happiest of earthly boons, while yet it is at its command; for there cometh the day to all when "neither the voice of the lute nor the birds" shall bring back the sweet slumbers that fell on their young eyes as unbidden as the dews.
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
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Writers are the main landmarks of the past.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
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.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
I did not fall into love - I rose into love.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
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.
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 -
To the thinker, the most trifling external object often suggests ideas, which, like Homer's chain, extend, link after link, from earth to heaven.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
In how large a proportion of creatures is existence composed of one ruling passion, the most agonizing of all sensations--fear.
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 -
There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Money is a terrible blab; she will betray the secrets of her owner, whatever he do to gag her. His virtues will creep out in her whisper; his vices she will cry aloud at the top of her tongue.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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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.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
A mind once cultivated will not lie fallow for half an hour.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry to a woman.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Midnight, and love, and youth, and Italy!
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Birds sing in vain to the ear, flowers bloom in vain to the eye, of mortified vanity and galled ambition. He who would know repose in retirement must carry into retirement his destiny, integral and serene, as the Caesars transported the statue of Fortune into the chamber they chose for their sleep.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
I would rather have five energetic and competent enemies than one fool friend.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
Woman makes half the sorrows which she boasts the privilege to sooth. Woman consoles us, it is true, while we are young and handsome; when we are old and ugly, woman snubs and scolds us. On the whole, then, woman in this scale, the weed in that. Jupiter! Hang out thy balance, and weigh them both; and if thou give the preference to woman, all I can say is, the next time Juno ruffles thee, O Jupiter, try the weed.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton