A Quote by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Man only of all earthly creatures, asks, Can the dead die forever? - and the instinct that urges the question is God's answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Quote Topics

Answer Asks Creatures Dead Die Earthly Forever Given God Instinct Man Only Question Urges Vain

Quote Author

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
English - Writer
May 25, 1803 - January 18, 1873

It is just man's turning away from instinct--his opposing himself to instinct--that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature andseeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.

Carl Jung

The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.

Matthew Arnold

Man is the only one in whom the instinct of life falters long enough to enable it to ask the question "Why?

Joseph Wood Krutch

There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and foremost vain.

Louis-Ferdinand Celine

If a man is a man and not a sheep in the flock, he has a survival instinct in him that leads him to fight even if he realizes he's fighting in vain, even if he knows he will lose.

Oriana Fallaci

The best way to make a sort of peace, a fragile armistice to be sure, but precious all the same, with men, officers or not, is to let them bask and wallow in childish self-glorification. There’s no such thing as intelligent vanity. It’s an instinct. And you’ll never find a man who is not first and formenost vain. The role of admiring doormat is about the only one that one man is glad to tolerate in another. With these soldiers I had no need to tax my imagination.

Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules, but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter. I was a coward on instinct.

William Shakespeare

The religious urge in man is not a mere passing phase in the history of his spiritual development, but the ultimate source of all his ethical thought and all his concepts of morality; not the outcome of primitive credulity which a more "enlightened" age could outgrow, but the only answer to a real, basic need of man at all times and in all environments. In another word, it is an instinct.

Muhammad Asad

We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.

Elisabeth Elliot

A new question has arisen in modern man's mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living...No sensible answer can be given to the question...because the question does not make any sense.

Erich Fromm

Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!

Tennessee Williams

The best option that you can have as an actor is pure instinct and you should be able to protect your instinct. Information can either cloud your instinct or aid it.

Rasika Dugal

The ordinary naturalist is not sufficiently aware that when dogmatizing on what species are, he is grappling with the whole question of the organic world & its connection with the time past & with Man; that it involves the question of Man & his relation to the brutes, of instinct, intelligence & reason, of Creation, transmutation & progressive improvement or development. Each set of geological questions & of ethnological & zool. & botan. are parts of the great problem which is always assuming a new aspect.

Charles Lyell

When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God.

Aleister Crowley

Don't you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct. Instinct is a lifesaver for sharks and entrepreneurs alike. Most people can recall times they ignored their gut only to regret it later. Learning to actually listen to your instinct is a great form of self-preservation. It's both incredibly easy and tough at the same time, but worth the effort to master.