Best Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes

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.

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength.

The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.

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.

Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge.

Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.

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.

When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.

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.

A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.

Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem.

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.

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.

A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.

Two lives that once part are as ships that divide.

Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.

It is difficult to say who do you the most harm: enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best.

Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

The prudent person may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates or ruins it.

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!

It is not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age of the heart.

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.

Chance happens to all, but to turn chance to account is the gift of few.

There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate.

The easiest person to deceive is one's own self.

A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry is to a woman.

The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion.

There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.

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.

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.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.

Youth, with swift feet, walks onward in the way; the land of joy lies all before his eyes.

Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.

In science read the newest works, in literature read the oldest.

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.

Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.

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.

One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.

In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.

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.

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.

Patience is not active; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.

Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.

A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last.

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.

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.

What mankind wants is not talent; it is purpose.