EDWARD BULWER LYTTON QUOTES II

English author & politician (1803-1873)

Love is a very contradiction of all the elements of our ordinary nature -- it makes the proud man meek -- the cheerful, sad -- the high-spirited, tame; our strongest resolutions, our hardiest energy fail before it. Believe me, you cannot prophesy of its future effect in a man from any knowledge of his past character.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Eugene Aram: A Tale

Tags: love


How fair, to sinless Adam, Eden smiled! But sin brought tears, and Eden was wild!

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Constance; Or, The Portrait

Tags: sin


What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve but the will to labour.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Lucretia; or, The children of Night

Tags: purpose


The public man needs but one patron, namely the lucky moment.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

written under pseudonym of Pisistratus Caxton, What Will He Do With It?

Tags: luck


Dream, O youth! Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets!

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

The Caxtons: A Family Picture

Tags: youth


Society is a long series of uprising ridges which from the first to the last offer no valley of repose; wherever you take your stand, you are looked down upon by those above you, and reviled and pelted by those below you. Every creature you see is a farthing Sisyphus, pushing his little stone up some Lilliputian mole-hill.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: society


Music, once admitted to the soul becomes ... a sort of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and galleries of the memory.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Zanoni

Tags: music


When the soul communes with itself the lip is silent.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings

Tags: silence


Labour is the purgatory of the erring.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Lucretia; or, The children of Night

Tags: labor


Fate laughs at probabilities.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Eugene Aram

Tags: fate


What, after all, is Heaven but a transition, from dim guesses and blind struggling with a mysterious and adverse fate, to the fullness of all wisdom.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

The Student: A Series of Papers

Tags: Heaven


Truth makes on the surface of nature no one track of light -- every eye looking on finds its own.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Caxtoniana

Tags: truth


Rank is a great beautifier.

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON

The Lady of Lyons


I know not why we should delay our tokens of respect to those who merit them, until the heart that our sympathy could have gladdened has ceased to beat. As men cannot read the epitaphs inscribed upon the marble that covers them, so the tombs that we erect to virtue often only prove our repentance that we neglected it when with us.

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: merit


Why should the soul ever repose? God, its Principle, reposes never.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Lucretia; or, The children of Night

Tags: soul


Though Hope be a small child, she can carry a great anchor!

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

The Last of the Barons

Tags: hope


You speak
As one who fed on poetry.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Richelieu

Tags: poetry


There's no weapon that slays its victim so surely (if well aimed) as praise.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

"Lucile"

Tags: praise


Patience is a good palfrey, and will carry us a long day.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

The Last of the Barons

Tags: patience


Lips with such sweetness in their honeyed deeps
As fills the rose in which a fairy sleeps.

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON

King Arthur

Tags: lips