Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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The learned compute that seven hundred and seven millions of millions of vibrations have to penetrate the eye before the eye can distinguish the tints of a violet.
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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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Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.
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Prudence, patience, labor, valor; these are the stars that rule the career of mortals.
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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.
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Never, be argued out of your soul, never be argued out of your honor, and never be argued into believing that soul and honor do not run a terrible risk if you limp into life with the load of a debt on your shoulders.
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Man only of all earthly creatures, asks, Can the dead die forever? - and the instinct that urges the question is God's answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain.
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Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.
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Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
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Happy indeed the poet of whom, like Orpheus, nothing is known but an immortal name! Happy next, perhaps, the poet of whom, like Homer, nothing is known but the immortal works. The more the merely human part of the poet remains a mystery, the more willing is the reverence given to his divine mission.
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In beginning the world, if you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully, put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon grand occasions. Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside, all grating sackcloth on the side next to the skin.
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We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments.
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Genius, the Pythian of the beautiful, leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull.
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What is human is immortal!
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Only by the candle, held in the skeleton hand of Poverty, can man read his own dark heart.
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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.
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Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit; for while the former makes us all nerve to the opinion of others, the latter is perfectly satisfied with its opinion of itself.
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The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.
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Kindness like light speaks in the air it gilds.
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Never get a reputation for a small perfection if you are trying for fame in a loftier area. The world can only judge by generals, and it sees that those who pay considerable attention to minutiae seldom have their minds occupied with great things.
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Ere yet we yearn for what is out of our reach, we are still in the cradle. When wearied out with our yearnings, desire again falls asleep; we are on the death-bed.
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Come, Death, and snatch me from disgrace.
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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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There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate.