Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
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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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He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite.
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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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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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Kindness like light speaks in the air it gilds.
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When the world frowns, we can face it; but let it smile, and we are undone.
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The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells.
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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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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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The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.
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Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.
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Agreeable surprises are the perquisites of youth.
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Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors.
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Master books, but do not let them master you.
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In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in our room, or get away into the street or the fields; in our earlier years we are still the savages of nature, and we do as the poor brutes do. The wounded stag leaves the herd; and if there is anything on a dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.
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Read to live, not live to read.
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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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More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye.
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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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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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The real truthfulness of all works of imagination, sculpture, painting, and written fiction, is so purely in the imagination, that the artist never seeks to represent positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth.
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Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star did ye drink in your liquid melancholy?
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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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It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best.