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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What, after all, is heaven, but a transition from dim guesses and blind struggling with a mysterious and adverse fate to the fullness of all wisdom--from ignorance, in a word, to knowledge, but knowledge of what order?
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Read to live, not live to read.
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The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.
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There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive, the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others.
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Nothing really immoral is ever permanently popular.
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Philosophy, while it soothes the reason, damps the ambition.
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Of all the weaknesses little men rail against, there is none that they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of incredulity is the surest. Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.
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Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.
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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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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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Evening is the delight of virtuous age; it seems an emblem of the tranquil close of busy life--serene, placid, and mild, with the impress of its great Creator stamped upon it; it spreads its quiet wings over the grave, and seems to promise that all shall be peace beyond it.
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As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner; and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, snivelling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.
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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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Expression is the mystery of beauty.
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Women love energy and grand results.
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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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The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells.
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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 the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.
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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.
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Agreeable surprises are the perquisites of youth.
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The faults of a brilliant writer are never dangerous on the long run; a thousand people read his work who would read no other; inquiry is directed to each of his doctrines; it is soon discovered what is sound and what is false; the sound become maxims, and the false beacons.
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Time, O my friend, is money! Time wasted can never conduce to money well managed.