Childhood and genius have the same master organ in common - inquisitiveness.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonHe who esteems trifles for themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonAsk any school-boy up to the age of fifteen where he would spend his holidays. Not one in five hundred will say, "In the streets of London," if you give him the option of green fields and running waters. It is, then, a fair presumption that there must be something of the child still in the character of the men or the women whom the country charms in maturer as in dawning life.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonOf all the conditions to which the heart is subject suspense is one that most gnaws and cankers into the frame. One little month of that suspense, when it involves death, we are told by an eye witness in "Wakefield on the Punishment of Death," is sufficient to plough fixed lines and furrows in a convict of five and twenty,--sufficient, to dash the brown hair with grey, and to bleach the grey to white.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton