It is noticeable how intuitively in age we go back with strange fondness to all that is fresh in the earliest dawn of youth. If we never cared for little children before, we delight to see them roll in the grass over which we hobble on crutches. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, careworn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn; and feel most delight in the returning spring.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonFate! There is no fate. Between the thought and the success God is the only agent. Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonCertain I am that every author who has written a book with earnest forethought and fondly cherished designs will bear testimony to the fact that much which he meant to convey has never been guessed at in any review of his work; and many a delicate beauty of thought, on which he principally valued himself, remains, like the statue of Isis, an image of truth from which no hand lifts the veil.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonThat man will never be a perfect gentleman who lives only with gentlemen. To be a man of the world we must view that world in every grade and in every perspective.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonWe are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton