Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes

Nature 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.

Every great man exhibits the talent of organization or construction, whether it be in a poem, a philosophical system, a policy, or a strategy. And without method there is no organization nor construction.

No reproach is like that we clothe in a smile, and present with a bow.

Genius is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose.

A sense of contentment makes us kindly and benevolent to others; we are not chafed and galled by cares which are tyrannical because original. We are fulfilling our proper destiny, and those around us feel the sunshine of our own hearts.

Emulation, 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.

Thought is valuable in proportion as it is generative.

Could we know by what strange circumstances a man's genius became prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills which his father paid for.

We tell our triumphs to the crowds, but our own hearts are the sole confidants of our sorrows.

When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be.

Remedy your deficiencies, and your merits will take care of themselves. Every man has in him good and evil. His good is his valiant army, his evil is his corrupt commissariat; reform the commissariat and the army will do its duty.

There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive, the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others.

You know There are moments when silence, prolonged and unbroken, More expressive may be than all words ever spoken.

To mourn deeply for the death of another loosens from myself the petty desire for, and the animal adherence to life. We have gained the end of the philosopher, and view without shrinking the coffin and the pall.

If thou be industrious to procure wealth, be generous in the disposal of it. Man never is so happy as when he giveth happiness unto another.

The learned compute that seven hundred and seven millions of millions of vibrations have to penetrate the eye before the eye can distinguish the tints of a violet.

Business dispatched is business well done, but business hurried is business ill done.

Childhood and genius have the same master organ in common - inquisitiveness.

The great secrets of being courted are, to shun others, and seem delighted with yourself.

Time, O my friend, is money! Time wasted can never conduce to money well managed.

The object of ambition, unlike that of love, never being wholly possessed, ambition is the more durable passion of the two.

Jewelry and profuse ornaments are unmistakable evidences of vulgarity.

Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.

He whom God hath gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as it were, an extra sense.

The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.

Agreeable surprises are the perquisites of youth.

More bounteous run rivers when the ice that locked their flow melts into their waters. And when fine natures relent, their kindness is swelled by the thaw.

Two lives that once part are as ships that divide.

The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan.

Remedy your deficiencies,and your merits will take care of themselves.

The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.

The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.

In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in our room, or get away into the street or the fields; in our earlier years we are still the savages of nature, and we do as the poor brutes do. The wounded stag leaves the herd; and if there is anything on a dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.

O be very sure That no man will learn anything at all, Unless he first will learn humility.

I have wrought great use out of evil tools.

Love is on the verge of hate each time it stoops for pardon.

There is in the heart of woman such a deep well of love that no age can freeze it.

There is certainly something of exquisite kindness and thoughtful benevolence in that rarest of gifts,--fine breeding.

Nothing but real love--(how rare it is; has one human heart in a million ever known it?) nothing but real love can repay us for the loss of freedom--the cares and fears of poverty--the cold pity of the world that we both despise and respect.

Westward, beyond the still pleasant, but, even then, no longer solitary, hamlet of Charing, a broad space, broken here and there by scattered houses and venerable pollards, in the early spring of 1467, presented the rural scene for the sports and pastimes of the inhabitants of Westminister and London.

He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.

Love is rarely a hypocrite; but hate--how detect and how guard against it! It lurks where you least expect it; it is created by causes that you can the least foresee; and civilization multiplies its varieties, whilst it favors its disguise.

Castles in the air cost a vast deal to keep up.

Love creates, love cements, love enters and harmonizes all things.

Prudence, patience, labor, valor; these are the stars that rule the career of mortals.

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.

When the soul communes with itself the lip is silent.

Though Hope be a small child, she can carry a great anchor!