Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.
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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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In every civilized society there is found a race of men who retain the instincts of the aboriginal cannibal and live upon their fellow-men as a natural food.
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It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything. Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or practice.
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There is certainly something of exquisite kindness and thoughtful benevolence in that rarest of gifts,--fine breeding.
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A man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him.
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What is human is immortal!
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Man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater.
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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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He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.
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Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.
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A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday.
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Ah, what without a heaven would be even love!--a perpetual terror of the separation that must one day come.
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Patience is a good palfrey, and will carry us a long day.
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Grief alone can teach us what is man.
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Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.
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In some exquisite critical hints on "Eurythmy," Goethe remarks, "that the best composition in pictures is that which, observing the most delicate laws of harmony, so arranges the objects that they by their position tell their own story." And the rule thus applied to composition in painting applies no less to composition in literature.
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The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits someone else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.
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To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart.
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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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When the world frowns, we can face it; but let it smile, and we are undone.
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To live On means not yours--be brave in silks and laces, Gallant in steeds; splendid in banquets; all Not yours. Given, uninherited, unpaid for; This is to be a trickster; and to filch Men's art and labour, which to them is wealth, Life, daily bread;--quitting all scores with "friend, You're troublesome!" Why this, forgive me, Is what, when done with a less dainty grace, Plain folks call "Theft.
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Love is rarely a hypocrite; but hate--how detect and how guard against it! It lurks where you least expect it; it is created by causes that you can the least foresee; and civilization multiplies its varieties, whilst it favors its disguise.
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Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen.