Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
-
Prudence, patience, labor, valor; these are the stars that rule the career of mortals.
-
A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday.
-
Nothing really immoral is ever permanently popular.
-
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.
-
Our very wretchedness grows dear to us when suffering for one we love.
-
There is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name, and we call it patience.
-
The man who has acquired the habit of study, though for only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to see the way he has made at the end of a twelvemonth.
-
Thought is valuable in proportion as it is generative.
-
Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.
-
Trees that, like the poplar, lift upward all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height. Trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us, when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lower drop their boughs.
-
Bright and illustrious illusions!
-
Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.
-
Let us fill urns with rose-leaves in May And hive the the trifty sweetness for December!
-
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.
-
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.
-
Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.
-
Kindness like light speaks in the air it gilds.
-
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.
-
Agreeable surprises are the perquisites of youth.
-
Shame is like the weaver's thread; if it breaks in the net, it is wholly imperfect.
-
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.
-
Read to live, not live to read.
-
He whom God hath gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as it were, an extra sense.
-
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.