Top 350 Edward Bulwer-Lytton Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

203. “Curse away! And let me tell thee, Beausant, a wise proverb The Arabs have,-“Curses are like young chickens, And still come home to roost.””

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

204. “Prudence, patience, labor, valor; these are the stars that rule the career of mortals.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

205. “A mind once cultivated will not lie fallow for half an hour.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

206. “To the thinker, the most trifling external object often suggests ideas, which, like Homer’s chain, extend, link after link, from earth to heaven.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

207. “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

208. “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

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

210. “Earnestness is the best gift of mental power, and deficiency of heart is the cause of many men never becoming great.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

211. “The curse of the great is ennui.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

216. “Fine natures are like fine poems; a glance at the first two lines suffices for a guess into the beauty that waits you if you read on.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

217. “If there is a virtue in the world at which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

219. “Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

220. “The fewer blows, the better. Brave men fight if they must; wise men never fight if they can help it.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

221. “Thought is valuable in proportion as it is generative.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

222. “Agreeable surprises are the perquisites of youth.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

223. “Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea?”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

224. “A woman is seldom merciful to the man who is timid.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

225. “One vice worn out makes us wiser than fifty tutors.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

226. “There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially the mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet mood.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

227. “Art employs method for the symmetrical formation of beauty, as science employs it for the logical exposition of truth; but the mechanical process is, in the last, ever kept visibly distinct, while in the first it escapes from sight amid the shows of color and the curves of grace.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

228. “It is the glorious doom of literature that the evil perishes and the good remains.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

229. “Strive, while improving your one talent, to enrich your whole capital as a man. It is in this way that you escape from the wretched narrow-mindedness which is the characteristic of every one who cultivates his specialty alone.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

231. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

232. “The first essential to success in the art you practice is respect for the art itself.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

233. “Injustice, they say, can only emanate from three causes: want of wisdom to perceive what is just, want of benevolence to desire, want of power to fulfill it; and that each of these three wants is incompatible in the All-Wise, the All-Good, the All-Powerful.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

234. “The frenzy of nations is the statesmanship of fate.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

235. “The poet in prose or verse – the creator – can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has forcibly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

236. “Grief alone can teach us what is man.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

237. “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!”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

238. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

239. “Poverty is relative, and, therefor not ignoble.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

240. “Read to live, not live to read.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

241. “Julius Caesar owed two millions when he risked the experiment of being general in Gaul. If Julius Caesar had not lived to cross the Rubicon, and pay off his debts, what would his creditors have called Julius Caesar?”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

242. “Nothing really immoral is ever permanently popular.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

243. “Revenge is a common passion; it is the sin of the uninstructed.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

244. “The Italians have voices like peacocks – German gives me a cold in the head – and Russian is nothing but sneezing.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

245. “Despair makes victims sometimes victors.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

246. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

247. “To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

248. “One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

249. “The object of ambition, unlike that of love, never being wholly possessed, ambition is the more durable passion of the two.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

250. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton