Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes
He that fancies himself very enlightened, because he sees the deficiencies of others, may be very ignorant, because he has not studied his own.
There is no past, as long as books shall live. Books make the past our heritage and our home.
People who are very vain are usually equally susceptible; and they who feel one thing acutely, will so feel another.
The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.
Love like Death,, Levels all ranks, and lays the shepherd's crook Beside the scepter
The public man needs but one patron, namely, the lucky moment.
Keep unscathed the good name; keep out of peril the honor without which even your battered old soldier who is hobbling into his grave on half-pay and a wooden leg would not change with Achilles.
Beautiful eyes in the face of a handsome woman are like eloquence to speech.
Debt is to man what the serpent is to the bird; its eye fascinates, its breath poisons, its coil crushes sinew and bone, its jaw is the pitiless grave.
Revenge is a common passion; it is the sin of the uninstructed.
The commerce of intellect loves distant shores. The small retail dealer trades only with his neighbor; when the great merchant trades he links the four quarters of the globe.
Husband and wife have so many interests in common that when they have jogged through the ups and downs of life a sufficient time, the leash which at first galled often grows easy and familiar.
More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye.
Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star did ye drink in your liquid melancholy?
Each man forms his duty according to his predominant characteristic; the stern require an avenging judge; the gentle, a forgiving father. Just so the pygmies declared that Jove himself was a pygmy.
Jewelry and profuse ornaments are unmistakable evidences of vulgarity.
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.
In how large a proportion of creatures is existence composed of one ruling passion, the most agonizing of all sensations--fear.
There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.
Nothing can constitute good-breeding that has not good-nature for its foundation.
Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius. They fear lest they should be loved for a quality, and not for themselves.
The heart of a girl is like a convent--the holier the cloister, the more charitable the door.
In other countries poverty is a misfortune - with us it is a crime.
The great secrets of being courted are, to shun others, and seem delighted with yourself.
The worst part of an eminent man's conversation is, nine times out of ten, to be found in that part by which he means to be clever.
Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors.
Science is an ocean. It is as open to the cockboat as the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for herrings.
In families well ordered, there is always one firm, sweet temper, which controls without seeming to dictate. The Greeks represented Persuasion as crowned.
The man who wants his wedding garments to suit him must allow plenty of time for the measure.
The circle of life is cut up into segments. All lines are equal if they are drawn from the centre and touch the circumference.
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.
They have written volumes out of which a couplet of verse, a period in prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell that survives a deluge.
As the films of clay are removed from our eyes, Death loses the false aspect of the spectre, and we fall at last into its arms as a wearied child upon the bosom of its mother.
A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that phantom "opinion" than he should fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the churchyard at dark.
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.
We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.
There is in the heart of woman such a deep well of love that no age can freeze it.
O woman! woman! thou shouldest have few sins of thine own to answer for! Thou art the author of such a book of follies in a man that it would need the tears of all the angels to blot the record out.
Political freedom is, or ought to be, the best guaranty for the safety and continuance of spiritual, mental, and civil freedom. It is the combination of numbers to secure the liberty to each one.
Love creates, love cements, love enters and harmonizes all things.