Top 44 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

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.

However we pass Time, he passes still, Passing away whatever the pastime, And, whether we use him well or ill, Some day he gives us the slip for the last time.

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

In life there are meetings which seem Like a fate.

Who can undo What time hath done? Who can win back the wind? Reckon lost music from a broken lute? Renew the redness of a last year's rose? Or dig the sunken sunset from the deep?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words, however, are things.

There is a pleasure that is born of pain.

We may live without friends; we may live without books But civilized men cannot live without cooks.

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

When time is flown, how it fled It is better neither to ask nor tell, Leave the dead moments to bury their dead.

Life is good, but not life in itself.

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.

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?

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.

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

Thought alone is eternal.

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

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

Good -humor is goodness and wisdom combined.

No star ever rose or set without influence somewhere.

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

There is purpose in pain; otherwise it were devilish.

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

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.

Great sorrow makes sacred the sufferer.

We are but as the instrument of Heaven.

Life hath set No landmarks before us.

There's a moment when all would go smooth and even, If only the dead could find out when To come back, and be forgiven.

I loved you ere I knew you; know you now, And having known you, love you better still.

The things which must be must be for the best.

We are our own fates.- Our deeds are our own doomsmen.- Man's life was made not for creeds but actions.

Heaven's slow but sure redress of human ills.

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

Rest is sweet after strife.

Who knows nothing base, Fears nothing known.