Money never can be well managed if sought solely through the greed of money for its own sake. In all meanness there is a defect of intellect as well as of heart. And even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonHe who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonFortune is said to be blind, but her favorites never are. Ambition has the eye of the eagle, prudence that of the lynx; the first looks through the air, the last along the ground.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonBu is a word that cools many a warm impulse, stifles many a kindly thought, puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed. No one would ever love his neighbor as himself if he listened to all the Buts that could be said.
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