Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes

The public man needs but one patron, namely, the lucky moment.

The classic literature is always modern.

The real truthfulness of all works of imagination, sculpture, painting, and written fiction, is so purely in the imagination, that the artist never seeks to represent positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth

Wrap thyself in the decent veil that the arts or the graces weave for thee, O human nature! It is only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without shame and offence!

In how large a proportion of creatures is existence composed of one ruling passion, the most agonizing of all sensations--fear.

The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells.

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

In life, as in whist, hope nothing from the way cards may be dealt to you. Play the cards, whatever they be, to the best of your skill.

Nothing really immoral is ever permanently popular.

Whatever you lend let it be your money, and not your name. Money you may get again, and, if not, you may contrive to do without it; name once lost you cannot get again.

Man only of all earthly creatures, asks, Can the dead die forever? - and the instinct that urges the question is God's answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain.

Happy indeed the poet of whom, like Orpheus, nothing is known but an immortal name! Happy next, perhaps, the poet of whom, like Homer, nothing is known but the immortal works. The more the merely human part of the poet remains a mystery, the more willing is the reverence given to his divine mission.

The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday.

What's money without happiness?

Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star did ye drink in your liquid melancholy?

And, of all the things upon earth, I hold that a faithful friend is the best.

Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.

He who has loved often ... has loved never.

The brave man wants no charms to encourage him to his duty, and the good man scorns all warnings that would deter him from fulfilling it.

A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always renourishing his genius.

More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye.

Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.

Law dies, books never.

Irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.

The food of hope is meditative action.

Art does not imitate nature, but founds itself on the study of nature, takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz: The mind and soul of man.

In every civilized society there is found a race of men who retain the instincts of the aboriginal cannibal and live upon their fellow-men as a natural food.

We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments.

Midnight, and love, and youth, and Italy!

There is no tongue that flatters like a lover's; and yet, in the exaggeration of his feelings, flattery seems to him commonplace. Strange and prodigal exuberance, which soon exhausts itself by flowing!

In the hour of strait and need, we measure men's stature not by the body, but the soul!

The easiest person to deceive is one's self.

Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies.

The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes, and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina.

What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth! The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker! They are more easily excited, they are more violent and apparent; but they have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power than in maturer life.

There is no man so great as not to have some littleness more predominant than all his greatness. Our virtues are the dupes, and often only the plaything of our follies.

Some have the temperament and tastes of genius, without its creative power. They feel acutely, but express tamely.

Read to live, not live to read.

Bright and illustrious illusions! Who can blame, who laugh at the boy, who not admire and commend him, for that desire of a fame outlasting the Pyramids by which he insensibly learns to live in a life beyond the present, and nourish dreams of a good unattainable by the senses?

Chance happens to all, but to turn chance to account is the gift of few.

Of all the weaknesses little men rail against, there is none that they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of incredulity is the surest. Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.

Self-confidence is not hope; it is the self-judgment of your own internal forces in their relation to the world without, which results from the failure of many hopes and the non-realization of many fears.

Power is so characteristically calm that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.

Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.

Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius. They fear lest they should be loved for a quality, and not for themselves.

How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel.

Ere yet we yearn for what is out of our reach, we are still in the cradle. When wearied out with our yearnings, desire again falls asleep; we are on the death-bed.