Though no participator in the joy of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practise toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonLet 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.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonMen are valued, not for what they are, but for what they seem to be.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonLeave glory to great folks. Ah, castles in the air cost a vast deal to keep up!
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonFate whirls on the bark, and the rough gale sweeps from the rising tide the lazy calm of thought.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonNature never gives to a living thing capacities not particularly meant for its benefit and use. If Nature gives to us capacities to believe that we have a Creator whom we never saw, of whom we have no direct proof, who is kind and good and tender beyond all that we know of kindness and goodness and tenderness on earth, it is because the endowment of capacities to conceive a Being must be for our benefit and use; it would not be for our benefit and use if it were a lie.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton