Edward Bulwer-Lytton
43 quotes.
Quotes by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- A good man does good merely by living.
- A mind once cultivated will not lie fallow for half an hour.
- All doubt is cowardice — all trust is brave.
- Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge.
- Art and science have their meeting point in method.
- Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.
- Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.
- Business dispatched is business well done, but business hurried is business ill done.
- Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.
- Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself.
- Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.
- Give, and you may keep your friend if you lose your money; lend, and the chances are that you lose your friend if ever you get back your money.
- Hope nothing from luck, and the probability is that you will be so prepared, forewarned, and forearmed, that all shallow observers will call you lucky.
- Hope warps judgment in council, but quickens energy in action.
- How a little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chills the ardor to excel.
- If a good face is a letter of recommendation, a good heart is a letter of credit.
- In belief lies the secret of all valuable exertion.
- In life, as in whist, hope nothing from the way cards may be dealt to you. Play the cards, whatever they be, to the best of your skill.
- In science read the newest works; in literature, the oldest.
- Love sacrifices all things to bless the thing it loves.
- Master books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.
- Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger.
- 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. A cottage flower gives honey to the bee, a king's garden none to the butterfly.
- Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
- 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.
- Power is so characteristically calm that calmness in itself has the aspect of power. And forbearance implies strength.
- Reading without purpose is sauntering, not exercise.
- 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.
- The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.
- The man who has acquired the habit of study, though for only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to see the way he has made at the end of a twelvemonth.
- The man who seeks one, and but one, thing in life may hope to achieve it; but he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, only reaps, from the hopes which he sows, a harvest of barren regrets.
- The pen is mightier than the sword.
- There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.
- 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.
- 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.
- There is one way of attaining what we may term, if not utter, at least mortal happiness; it is by a sincere and unrelaxing activity for the happiness of others.
- To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart.
- We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments.
- What is past is past. There is a future left to all men, who have the virtue to repent and the energy to atone.
- What men want is not talent, it is purpose—in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labour.