There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonMan must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonIt is the glorious doom of literature that the evil perishes and the good remains.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonIn science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature the oldest.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonThe imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes, and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton