Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Westward, beyond the still pleasant, but, even then, no longer solitary, hamlet of Charing, a broad space, broken here and there by scattered houses and venerable pollards, in the early spring of 1467, presented the rural scene for the sports and pastimes of the inhabitants of Westminister and London.Collection: Sports
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.Collection: Death
To how many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith!Collection: Death
There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about.Collection: Fashion
I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child.Collection: Morning
The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes, and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina.Collection: Mistake
Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.Collection: Heart
Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without itCollection: Inspirational
The grave is, I suspect, the sole commonwealth which attains that dead flat of social equality that life in its every principle so heartily abhors.Collection: Principles
I believe that there is much less difference between the author and his works than is currently supposed; it is usually in the physical appearance of the writer,--his manners, his mien, his exterior,--that he falls short of the ideal a reasonable man forms of him--rarely in his mind.Collection: Believe
The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe; the poet can call an universe from the atom.Collection: Stars
A chord, stronger or weaker, is snapped asunder in every parting, and time's busy fingers are not practiced in re-splicing broken ties. Meet again you may; will it be in the same way? With the same sympathies? With the same sentiments? Will the souls, hurrying on in diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream? Rarely, rarely!Collection: Goodbye
Give, and you may keep your friend it you lose your money; lend, and the chances are that you lose your friend if ever you get back your money.Collection: Giving
When you borrow on your character, it is your character that you leave in pawn.Collection: Character
We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.Collection: Beautiful
Trees that, like the poplar, lift upward all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height. Trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us, when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lower drop their boughs.Collection: Giving
The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan.Collection: Thinking
Never get a reputation for a small perfection if you are trying for fame in a loftier area. The world can only judge by generals, and it sees that those who pay considerable attention to minutiae seldom have their minds occupied with great things.Collection: Character
Despair makes victims sometimes victors.Collection: Despair
In every civilized society there is found a race of men who retain the instincts of the aboriginal cannibal and live upon their fellow-men as a natural food.Collection: Men
The more the merely human part of the poet remains a mystery, the more willing is the reverence given to his divine mission.Collection: Mystery
He that fancies himself very enlightened, because he sees the deficiencies of others, may be very ignorant, because he has not studied his own.Collection: Personality
It is noticeable how intuitively in age we go back with strange fondness to all that is fresh in the earliest dawn of youth. If we never cared for little children before, we delight to see them roll in the grass over which we hobble on crutches. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, careworn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn; and feel most delight in the returning spring.Collection: Children
Man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater.Collection: Disappointment
It is a glorious fever, desire to know.Collection: Knowledge
Genius has no brother.Collection: Brother
Wrap thyself in the decent veil that the arts or the graces weave for thee, O human nature! It is only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without shame and offence!Collection: Art
But never yet the dog our country fed, Betrayed the kindness or forgot the bread.Collection: Country
Sooner mayest thou trust thy pocket to a pickpocket than give loyal friendship to the man who boasts of eyes to the heart never mounts in dew! Only when man weeps he should be alone, not because tears are weak, but they should be secret. Tears are akin to prayer,--Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears.Collection: Prayer
He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.Collection: Angel
When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are.Collection: Men
Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.Collection: Art
Irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.Collection: Thinking
There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive, the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others.Collection: Selfishness
Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit; for while the former makes us all nerve to the opinion of others, the latter is perfectly satisfied with its opinion of itself.Collection: Vanity
To dispense with ceremony is the most delicate mode of conferring a compliment.Collection: Appreciation
All doubt is cowardice - all trust is brave.Collection: Courage
When the soul communes with itself the lip is silent.Collection: Soul
Good humor is the sunshine of the mind.Collection: Sunshine
Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes.Collection: Men
It is destiny phrase of the weak human heart! 'It is destiny' dark apology for every error! The strong and virtuous admit no destinyCollection: Strong
Man hazards the condition and loses the virtues of a freeman, in proportion as he accustoms his thoughts to view without anguish or shame, his lapse into the bondage of debtor.Collection: Men
There is certainly something of exquisite kindness and thoughtful benevolence in that rarest of gifts,--fine breeding.Collection: Kindness
A man is already of consequence in the world when it is known that we can implicitly rely upon him. Often I have known a man to be preferred in stations of honor and profit because he had this reputation: When he said he knew a thing, he knew it, and when he said he would do a thing, he did it.Collection: Trust
Fate whirls on the bark, and the rough gale sweeps from the rising tide the lazy calm of thought.Collection: Fate
I have wrought great use out of evil tools.Collection: Evil
A gentleman's taste in dress is upon principle, the avoidance of all things extravagant. It consists in the quiet simplicity of exquisite neatness; but, as the neatness must be a neatness in fashion, employ the best tailor; pay him ready money, and, on the whole, you wi11 find him the cheapest.Collection: Fashion
Though no participator in the joy of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practise toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost.Collection: Summer
Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.Collection: Forgiveness