Edward Bulwer-Lytton Quotes

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In one of the Welsh counties is a small village called A-----. It is somewhat removed from the high road, and is, therefore, but little known to those luxurious amateurs of the picturesque, who view nature through the windows of a carriage and four.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
I believe that there is much less difference between the author and his works than is currently supposed; it is usually in the physical appearance of the writer,--his manners, his mien, his exterior,--that he falls short of the ideal a reasonable man forms of him--rarely in his mind.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The haughty woman who can stand alone, and requires no leaning-place in our hearts, loses the spell of her sex.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Toil to some is happiness, and rest to others. This man can only breathe in crowds, and that man only in solitudes.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The poet in prose or verse - the creator - can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has forcibly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
As it has been finely expressed, "Principle is a passion for truth." And as an earlier and homelier writer hath it, "The truths we believe in are the pillars of our world.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Science is not a club, it is an ocean; it is open to the cockboat as the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for herrings. Who can exhaust the sea?

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Birds sing in vain to the ear, flowers bloom in vain to the eye, of mortified vanity and galled ambition. He who would know repose in retirement must carry into retirement his destiny, integral and serene, as the Caesars transported the statue of Fortune into the chamber they chose for their sleep.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Fine natures are like fine poems; a glance at the first two lines suffices for a guess into the beauty that waits you if you read on.

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The man who has acquired the habit of study, though for only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to see the way he has made at the end of a twelvemonth.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Character is money; and according as the man earns or spends the money, money in turn becomes character. As money is the most evident power in the world's uses, so the use that he makes of money is often all that the world knows about a man.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The secret of fashion is to surprise and never to disappoint.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
What, after all, is heaven, but a transition from dim guesses and blind struggling with a mysterious and adverse fate to the fullness of all wisdom--from ignorance, in a word, to knowledge, but knowledge of what order?

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
When you talk to the half-wise, twaddle; when you talk to the ignorant, brag; when you talk to the sagacious, look very humble and ask their opinion.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Centuries roll, customs change, but, ever since the time of the earliest mother, woman yearns to be the soother.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
A woman too often reasons from her heart; hence two-thirds of her mistakes and her troubles.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
There is no policy like politeness; and a good manner is the best thing in the world either to get a good name, or to supply the want of it.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Certain I am that every author who has written a book with earnest forethought and fondly cherished designs will bear testimony to the fact that much which he meant to convey has never been guessed at in any review of his work; and many a delicate beauty of thought, on which he principally valued himself, remains, like the statue of Isis, an image of truth from which no hand lifts the veil.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Why should the soul ever repose? God, its Principle, reposes never.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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!

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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton