Top 375 Quotes & Sayings by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

What a rare gift, by the by, is that of manners! how difficult to define, how much more difficult to impart! Better for a man to possess them than wealth, beauty, or talent; they will more than supply all.

Better than fame is still the wish for fame, the constant training for a glorious strife.

Love thou rose, yet leave it on its stem.

Nothing ages like laziness.

If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not, don't. And the advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing.

Patience is the courage of the conqueror, the strength of man against destiny.

In the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a bright manhood, there is no such word as fail.

In science, address the few, in literature the many. In science, the few must dictate opinion to the many; in literature, the many, sooner or later, force their judgement on the few.

There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.

Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger.

That man will never be a perfect gentleman who lives only with gentlemen. To be a man of the world we must view that world in every grade and in every perspective.

It is a wonderful advantage to a man, in every pursuite or avocation, to secure an adviser in a sensible woman. In woman there is at once a subtle delicacy of tact, and a plain soundness of judgement, which are rarely combined to an equal degree in man. A woman, if she be really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing: for a woman friend always desires to be proud of you.

We may observe in humorous authors that the faults they chiefly ridicule have often a likeness in themselves. Cervantes had much of the knight-errant in him; Sir George Etherege was unconsciously the Fopling Flutter of his own satire; Goldsmith was the same hero to chambermaids, and coward to ladies that he has immortalized in his charming comedy; and the antiquarian frivolities of Jonathan Oldbuck had their resemblance in Jonathan Oldbuck's creator.

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

Whenever man commits a crime heaven finds a witness.

Business first, then pleasure.

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.

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

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.

There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate.

Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen.

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

Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.

It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best.

He 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.

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.

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

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.

Master books, but do not let them master you.

The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits someone else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.

The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion.

The prudent person may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates or ruins it

Every man loves and admires his own country because it produced him.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I did not fall into love - I rose into love.

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

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

The cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.

Of all the virtues necessary to the completion of the perfect man, there is none to be more delicately implied and less ostentatiously vaunted than that of exquisite feeling or universal benevolence.

The secret of fashion is to surprise and never to disappoint.

The Management of money is, in much, the management of self. If heaven allotted to each man seven guardian angels, five of them, at least, would be found night and day hovering over his pockets.

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.

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

Strive, while improving your one talent, to enrich your whole capital as a man. It is in this way that you escape from the wretched narrow-mindedness which is the characteristic of every one who cultivates his specialty alone.

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.

Earnestness is the best gift of mental power, and deficiency of heart is the cause of many men never becoming great.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.

Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.

A woman is seldom merciful to the man who is timid.

Money never can be well managed if sought solely through the greed of money for its own sake. In all meanness there is a defect of intellect as well as of heart. And even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.

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

Genius is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose.

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.

It is the glorious doom of literature that the evil perishes and the good remains.

To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: Leave no stone unturned.

Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.