Quotes from Edward Bulwer-Lytton

What is more strange yet, his wife was a daughter of quiet, sober, unfantastic England: she was much younger than himself; she was fair and gentle, with a sweet English face; she had married him from choice, and (will you believe it?) she yet loved him. How she came to marry him, or how this shy, unsocial, wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I can only explain by asking you to look round and explain first to ME how half the husbands and half the wives you meet ever found a mate!

Destiny is less inexorable than it appears. The resources of the great Ruler of the Universe are not so scanty and so stern as to deny to men the divine privilege of Free Will; all of us can carve out our own way, and God can make our very contradictions harmonise with His solemn ends.

The Ides are come, not gone." "Tush! if he is a soothsayer, you are not Caesar. It is your vanity that makes you credulous. Thank Heaven, I do not think myself of such importance that the operations of Nature should be changed in order to frighten me." "But why should the operations of Nature be changed? There may be a deeper philosophy than we dream of, — a philosophy that discovers the secrets of Nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses.

Dost thou think," said Mejnour, "that I would give to the mere pupil, whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might change the face of the social world? The last secrets are intrusted only to him of whose virtue the Master is convinced. Patience! It is labour itself that is the great purifier of the mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow upon thyself as thy mind becomes riper to receive them.

It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything. Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves.

Consult not your friend; he is sensible and wise, but not now is his wisdom needed. There are times in life when from the imagination, and not the reason, should wisdom come, — this for you is one of them.

Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Merton, gazing on his face, saw that a great change had passed there. The flexile and dubious expression of youth was forever gone; the features were locked, rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom that an hour seemed to have done the work of years.

Alas! there is no fool like him who wishes for knowledge! It is only through woe that we are taught to reflect, and we gather the honey of worldly wisdom, not from flowers, but thorns.

However, he initially saw no moral issue with Falkland and dismissed any criticism of the work as faux outrage and contended that he was content to attract readers to his works by any means, including controversy. Leslie George Mitchell states that Bulwer-Lytton, or just Bulwer as he was known at that time, considered his poetry to be his finest work and wished to increase its readership through his novel writing and reputation.

I have grown calm and unrepining with years; and, if I am now shrinking from men, I have derived at least this advantage from the loneliness first made habitual by regret; that while I feel increased benevolence to others, I have learned to look for happiness only in myself.

Opinion was to be free as air; and in order to make it so, it was necessary to exterminate all those whose opinions were not the same as Mons. Jean Nicot's.

I soon discovered that all civility is but the mask of design.

In the laws which regulate the Universe it is decreed that nothing wicked can long endure. Be wise, and let history warn thee. Thou standest on the verge of two worlds, — the Past and the Future; and voices from either shriek omen in thy ear. I have done. I bid thee farewell.

Only when the sap is dried up, only when age comes on, does the sun shine in vain for man and for the tree.

Vain labour for me — vain labour almost for the grave English language — to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from lip to lip. The favourite theme was the superiority of the moderns to the ancients. Condorcet on this head was eloquent, and to some, at least, of his audience, most convincing. That Voltaire was greater than Homer few there were disposed to deny. Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull pedantry which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime.

He was to know THE RENEWAL OF LIFE; the seasons that chilled to winter should yet bring again the bloom and the mirth of spring. Man's common existence is as one year to the vegetable world: he has his spring, his summer, his autumn, and winter, — but only ONCE.

The pen is mightier than the sword! a

The music, once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air. Now at times, then, these phantoms of sound floated back upon her fancy; if gay, to call a smile from every dimple; if mournful, to throw a shade upon her brow, — to make her cease from her childishmirth, and sit apart and muse.

If at times thou canst not comprehend the language of my thoughts, at times also I hear sweet enigmas in that of thy emotions.

Have you ever remarked, that people who live the most by themselves reflect the most upon others; and that he who lives surrounded by the million never thinks of any but the one individual — himself?

Talent does what it can: Genius does what it must.

He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.

We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.

Punctuality is a virtue, If you don't mind being lonely.