Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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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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Only by the candle, held in the skeleton hand of Poverty, can man read his own dark heart.
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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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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.
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Shame is like the weaver's thread; if it breaks in the net, it is wholly imperfect.
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We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments.
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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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Business first, then pleasure.
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Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.
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The strong and virtuous admit no destiny.
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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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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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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 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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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.
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The poet in prose or verse - the creator - can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has forcibly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them.
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As the excitement of the game increases, prudence is sure to diminish.
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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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What is human is immortal!
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When you talk to the half-wise, twaddle; when you talk to the ignorant, brag; when you talk to the sagacious, look very humble and ask their opinion.
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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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Nothing really immoral is ever permanently popular.
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Nothing so good as a university education, nor worse than a university without its education.
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Genius, the Pythian of the beautiful, leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull.