Top 350 Edward Bulwer-Lytton Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

152. “He who sees his heir in his own child, carries his eye over hopes and possessions lying far beyond his gravestone, viewing his life, even here, as a period but closed with a comma. He who sees his heir in another man’s child sees the full stop at the end of the sentence.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

153. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

154. “Men are valued, not for what they are, but for what they seem to be.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

155. “The man who wants his wedding garments to suit him must allow plenty of time for the measure.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

156. “I did not fall into love – I rose into love.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

158. “People who are very vain are usually equally susceptible; and they who feel one thing acutely, will so feel another.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

159. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

160. “A man’s ancestry is a positive property to him.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

161. “Money is a terrible blab; she will betray the secrets of her owner, whatever he do to gag her. His virtues will creep out in her whisper; his vices she will cry aloud at the top of her tongue.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

162. “In solitude the passions feed upon the heart.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

163. “What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but will to labor. I believe that labor judiciously and continuously applied becomes genius.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

164. “Dandies, when first-rate, are generally very agreeable men.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

165. “The night is past,-joy cometh with the morrow.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

166. “When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

167. “That man will never be a perfect gentleman who lives only with gentlemen. To be a man of the world we must view that world in every grade and in every perspective.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

168. “Tyranny,” said Solon, “is a fair field, but it has no outlet.” A subtle, as well as a noble saying; it implies that he who has once made himself the master of the state has no option as to the means by which he must continue his power. Possessed of that fearful authority, his first object is to rule, and it becomes a secondary object to rule well.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

169. “Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

170. “Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

171. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

172. “O woman! woman! thou shouldest have few sins of thine own to answer for! Thou art the author of such a book of follies in a man that it would need the tears of all the angels to blot the record out.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

173. “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 – from ignorance, in a word, to knowledge, but knowledge of what order?”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

174. “Happy indeed the poet of whom, like Orpheus, nothing is known but an immortal name! Happy next, perhaps, the poet of whom, like Homer, nothing is known but the immortal works. The more the merely human part of the poet remains a mystery, the more willing is the reverence given to his divine mission.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

175. “Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

176. “In these days half our diseases come from neglect of the body in overwork of the brain.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

177. “Husband and wife have so many interests in common that when they have jogged through the ups and downs of life a sufficient time, the leash which at first galled often grows easy and familiar.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

178. “Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

179. “What a rare gift, by the by, is that of manners! how difficult to define, how much more difficult to impart! Better for a man to possess them than wealth, beauty, or talent; they will more than supply all.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

180. “Kindness like light speaks in the air it gilds.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

181. “Though Hope be a small child, she can carry a great anchor!”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

182. “In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature the oldest.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

183. “The heart of a girl is like a convent – the holier the cloister, the more charitable the door.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

184. “Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

185. “Never, be argued out of your soul, never be argued out of your honor, and never be argued into believing that soul and honor do not run a terrible risk if you limp into life with the load of a debt on your shoulders.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

186. “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!”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

187. “If you are in doubt whether to write a letter or not, don’t. And the advice applies to many doubts in life besides that of letter writing.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

188. “To how many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith!”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

189. “Whatever the number of a man’s friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

190. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

191. “Bright and illustrious illusions!”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

192. “What is past is past, there is a future left to all men, who have the virtue to repent and the energy to atone.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

193. “Of all the virtues necessary to the completion of the perfect man, there is none to be more delicately implied and less ostentatiously vaunted than that of exquisite feeling or universal benevolence.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

194. “When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

195. “It is a glorious fever, desire to know.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

197. “When the world frowns, we can face it; but let it smile, and we are undone.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

198. “In belief lies the secret of all valuable exertion.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

199. “The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe; the poet can call an universe from the atom.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

200. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton