Top 375 Quotes & Sayings by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton - Page 2

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.

Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.

If there is a virtue in the world at which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness.

Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame - to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell.

Men are valued, not for what they are, but for what they seem to be.

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

Success never needs an excuse.

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.

Genius has no brother.

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

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

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

As the excitement of the game increases, prudence is sure to diminish.

But never yet the dog our country fed, Betrayed the kindness or forgot the bread.

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!

Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than man.

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.

Julius Caesar owed two millions when he risked the experiment of being general in Gaul. If Julius Caesar had not lived to cross the Rubicon, and pay off his debts, what would his creditors have called Julius Caesar?

Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes.

It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything. Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or practice.

Tears are akin to prayer - Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears.

Say what we will, you may be sure that ambition is an error; its wear and tear of heart are never recompensed, -it steals away the freshness of life, -it deadens its vivid and social enjoyments, -it shuts our souls to our own youth, -and we are old ere we remember that we have made a fever and a labor of our raciest years.

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

In these days half our diseases come from neglect of the body in overwork of the brain.

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

As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner; and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, snivelling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.

Kindness like light speaks in the air it gilds.

Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.

Leave glory to great folks. Ah, castles in the air cost a vast deal to keep up!

A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry to a woman.

Ambition has no rest.

Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea?

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.

Nothing can constitute good-breeding that has not good-nature for its foundation.

I would rather have five energetic and competent enemies than one fool friend.

When the soul communes with itself the lip is silent.

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

Let youth cherish sleep, the happiest of earthly boons, while yet it is at its command; for there cometh the day to all when "neither the voice of the lute nor the birds" shall bring back the sweet slumbers that fell on their young eyes as unbidden as the dews.

When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are.

Only by the candle, held in the skeleton hand of Poverty, can man read his own dark heart.

To dispense with ceremony is the most delicate mode of conferring a compliment.

We must remember how apt man is to extremes--rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust.

Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.

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

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.

Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.

To the thinker, the most trifling external object often suggests ideas, which, like Homer's chain, extend, link after link, from earth to heaven.

Never get a reputation for a small perfection if you are trying for fame in a loftier area. The world can only judge by generals, and it sees that those who pay considerable attention to minutiae seldom have their minds occupied with great things.

Sooner mayest thou trust thy pocket to a pickpocket than give loyal friendship to the man who boasts of eyes to the heart never mounts in dew! Only when man weeps he should be alone, not because tears are weak, but they should be secret. Tears are akin to prayer,--Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears.

It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything.

Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit; for while the former makes us all nerve to the opinion of others, the latter is perfectly satisfied with its opinion of itself.

Say what we will, we may be sure that ambition is an error. Its wear and tear on the heart are never recompensed.

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

The strong and virtuous admit no destiny.

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.

Every street has two sides, the shady side and the sunny. When two men shake hands and part, mark which of the two takes the sunny side; he will be the younger man of the two.

Fate! There is no fate. Between the thought and the success God is the only agent. Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.

It is a glorious fever, desire to know.

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.

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.