Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. quotes
1803-1873 British Novelist PoetIt is difficult to say who do you the most harm: enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Enemies
Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Dreams
The easiest person to deceive is one s own self.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Deceit
The conscience is the most flexible material in the world. Today you cannot stretch it over a mole hill; while tomorrow it can hide a mountain.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Conscience
Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Common Sense
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.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Choice
The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Eccentricity
One of the surest evidences of friendship that one individual can display to another is telling him gently of a fault. If any other can excel it, it is listening to such a disclosure with gratitude, and amending the error.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Friends and Friendship
Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Genius
A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Flattery
Chance happens to all, but to turn chance to account is the gift of few.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Fate
Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Happiness
What ever our wandering our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and in the middle of the objects more immediately within our reach.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Happiness
Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Health
There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Fate
A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Heart
No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Inconsistency
Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Love
When the world has got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to kill it. You beat it over the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and behold! the next day it is as healthy as ever.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Lies and Lying
There is no such thing as luck. It s a fancy name for being always at our duty, and so sure to be ready when good time comes.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Luck
Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Power
Patience is not active; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Patience
Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Philosophers and Philosophy
How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Praise
The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Mind
A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry is to a woman.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Men and Women
A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Pleasure
A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes today.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Mind
What is past is past, there is a future left to all men, who have the virtue to repent and the energy to atone.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Repentance
What mankind wants is not talent; it is purpose.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Purpose
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.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Success
The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Teachers and Teaching
Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Remorse
One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Truth
We tell our triumphs to the crowds, but our own hearts are the sole confidants of our sorrows.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Sorrow
How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Proverbs
Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Books - Reading
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!
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Fame
The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man s observation, not overturning it.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Conversation
It is not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age of the heart.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Age and Aging
We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Age and Aging
Two lives that once part are as ships that divide.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Divorce
Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Anger
Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Enthusiasm
When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Aid and Assistance
The prudent person may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates or ruins it.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Enthusiasm
In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Books - Reading
In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Beauty
There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Vanity
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.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Wisdom
Youth, with swift feet, walks onward in the way; the land of joy lies all before his eyes.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Youth
Bu is a word that cools many a warm impulse, stifles many a kindly thought, puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed. No one would ever love his neighbor as himself if he listened to all the Buts that could be said.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Words
Writers are the main landmarks of the past.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Writers and Writing
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
Writers and Writing