We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonShame is like the weaver's thread; if it breaks in the net, it is wholly imperfect.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonThere is no such thing as luck. It's a fancy name for being always at our duty, and so sure to be ready when good time comes.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonA man who cannot win fame in big own age will have a very small chance of winning it from posterity. True, there are some half-dozen exceptions to this truth among millions of myriads that attest it; but what man of common sense would invest any large amount of hope in so unpromising a lottery?
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonEmulation, even in brutes, is sensitively "nervous." See the tremor of the thoroughbred racer before he starts. The dray-horse does not tremble, but he does not emulate. It is not his work to run a race. Says Marcus Antoninus, "It is all one to a stone whether it be thrown upward or downward." Yet the emulation of a man of genius is seldom with his contemporaries, that is, inwardly in his mind, although outwardly in his act it would seem so. The competitors with whom his secret ambition seems to vie are the dead.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton