Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton Quotes

Sorrows humanize our race; tears are the showers that fertilize the world.

Rest is sweet after strife.

Heaven's slow but sure redress of human ills.

Only by knowledge of that which is not thyself, shall thyself be learned.

That's best Which God sends. 'Twas His will: it is mine.

Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem.

In life there are meetings which seem Like a fate.

The man who seeks one thing in life and but one, May hope to achieve it before life is done; But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows, A harvest of barren regrets.

There is purpose in pain; otherwise it were devilish.

Since we parted yester eve, I do love thee, love, believe, Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer,- One dream deeper, one night stronger, One sun surer,-thus much more Than I loved thee, love, before.

The world is filled with folly and sin, And Love must cling, where it can, I say: For Beauty is easy enough to win; But one isn't loved every day.

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes today.

There is a pleasure that is born of pain.

Good -humor is goodness and wisdom combined.

We gain justice, judgment, with years, or else years are in vain.

Master books, but do not let them master you. - Read to live, not live to read.

Who knows nothing base, Fears nothing known.

The world is a nettle; disturb it, it stings. Grasp it firmly, it stings not.

Words, however, are things.

No true love there can be without Its dread penalty--jealousy.

Thought alone is eternal.

No one will learn anything at all, unless one first will learn humility.

We are but as the instrument of Heaven.

Life is good, but not life in itself.

That man is great, and he alone, Who serves a greatness not his own, For neither praise nor self: Content to know and be unknown: Whole in himself.

No star ever rose or set without influence somewhere.

Alas! must it ever be so? Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go, And fight our own shadows forever?

Do not think that years leave us and find us the same!

Art is Nature made by Man, To Man the interpreter of God.

No life can be pure in its purpose, and strong in its strife, and all life not be purer and stronger thereby.

Whenever I hear French spoken as I approve, I find myself quietly falling in love.

Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize.

The things which must be must be for the best.

They only fall, that strive to move, Or lose, that care to keep.

Great sorrow makes sacred the sufferer.

We may live without poetry, music and art; We may live without conscience, and live without heart; We may live without friends; we may live without books; But civilized man cannot live without cooks. . . . He may live without books,-what is knowledge but grieving? He may live without hope,-what is hope but deceiving? He may live without love,-what is passion but pining? But where is the man that can live without dining?

There is nothing certain in a man's life but that he must lose it.

Truth makes on the ocean of nature no one track of light; every eye, looking on, finds its own.

Those true eyes, Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise, The sweet soul shining through them.

It is, however, not to the museum, or the lecture-room, or the drawing- school, but to the library, that we must go for the completion of our humanity. It is books that bear from age to age the intellectual wealth of the world.

Unseen hands delay The coming of what oft seems close in ken, And, contrary, the moment, when we say "'Twill never come!" comes on us even then.