Top 350 Edward Bulwer-Lytton Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

302. “Art is the effort of man to express the ideas which nature suggests to him of a power above nature, whether that power be within the recesses of his own being, or in the Great First Cause of which nature, like himself, is but the effect.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

303. “More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

304. “Tears are akin to prayer – Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

305. “Genius, the Pythian of the beautiful, leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

306. “Poets alone are sure of immortality; they are the truest diviners of nature.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

307. “The worst part of an eminent man’s conversation is, nine times out of ten, to be found in that part by which he means to be clever.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

308. “There is no policy like politeness; and a good manner is the best thing in the world either to get a good name, or to supply the want of it.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

309. “Every man loves and admires his own country because it produced him.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

310. “In one of the Welsh counties is a small village called A – –. It is somewhat removed from the high road, and is, therefore, but little known to those luxurious amateurs of the picturesque, who view nature through the windows of a carriage and four.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

311. “The bold sympathize with the bold; and in great hearts, there is always a certain friendship for a gallant foe.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

312. “A sense of contentment makes us kindly and benevolent to others; we are not chafed and galled by cares which are tyrannical because original. We are fulfilling our proper destiny, and those around us feel the sunshine of our own hearts.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

313. “Keep we to the broad truths before us; duty here; knowledge comes alone in the Hereafter.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

314. “The Management of money is, in much, the management of self. If heaven allotted to each man seven guardian angels, five of them, at least, would be found night and day hovering over his pockets.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

315. “I will believe him to have been a very respectable man, who only spoke the truth when he boasted of his power to be in two places at the same time.” “Is that so difficult?” said the old gentleman; “if so, you have never dreamed!”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

316. “The secret of fashion is to surprise and never to disappoint.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

317. “Philosophy, while it soothes the reason, damps the ambition.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

318. “It may, indeed, be said that sympathy exists in all minds, as Faraday has discovered that magnetism exists in all metals; but a certain temperature is required to develop the hidden property, whether in the metal or the mind.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

319. “Vanity calculates but poorly on the vanity of others; what a virtue we should distil from frailty, what a world of pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

320. “Alas! innocence is but a poor substitute for experience.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

321. “Honest men are the gentlemen of nature.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

322. “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

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

324. “He whom God hath gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as it were, an extra sense.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

325. “Ah!” he exclaimed, “how right you were to tell me to marry respectably; to have a solid position; to live in decorous fear of the world and one’s wife; and to command the envy of the poor, the good opinion of the rich. You have practised what you preach.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

326. “The Almighty proves his existence by creating.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

327. “It is a very high mind to which gratitude is not a painful sensation. If you wish to please, you will find it wiser to receive, solicit even, favors, than accord them; for the vanity of the obligor is always flattered, that of the obligee rarely.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

328. “Political freedom is, or ought to be, the best guaranty for the safety and continuance of spiritual, mental, and civil freedom. It is the combination of numbers to secure the liberty to each one.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

329. “Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

330. “This confession leads me to the sentence with which I shall conclude: If, reader, in this book there be anything that pleases you, it is certainly mine; but whenever you come to something you dislike, – lay the blame upon the old gentleman!”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

331. “Keep unscathed the good name; keep out of peril the honor without which even your battered old soldier who is hobbling into his grave on half-pay and a wooden leg would not change with Achilles.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

332. “Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

333. “The faults of a brilliant writer are never dangerous on the long run; a thousand people read his work who would read no other; inquiry is directed to each of his doctrines; it is soon discovered what is sound and what is false; the sound become maxims, and the false beacons.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

334. “O be very sure That no man will learn anything at all, Unless he first will learn humility.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

335. “A prudent consideration for Number One.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

336. “Each man forms his duty according to his predominant characteristic; the stern require an avenging judge; the gentle, a forgiving father. Just so the pygmies declared that Jove himself was a pygmy.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

337. “When the soul communes with itself the lip is silent.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

338. “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.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

340. “We cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

341. “We tell our triumphs to the crowds, but our own hearts are the sole confidants of our sorrows.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

342. “My theory is that the Supernatural is the Impossible, and what is called the supernatural is only something in the laws of nature of which we have been hitherto ignorant.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

343. “Public men are often alarmed into gratitude, seldom shamed into it.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

344. “The great secrets of being courted are, to shun others, and seem delighted with yourself.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

345. “Men never forgive those in whom there is nothing to pardon.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

347. “He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

348. “Man only of all earthly creatures, asks, Can the dead die forever? – and the instinct that urges the question is God’s answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

349. “Evening is the delight of virtuous age; it seems an emblem of the tranquil close of busy life – serene, placid, and mild, with the impress of its great Creator stamped upon it; it spreads its quiet wings over the grave, and seems to promise that all shall be peace beyond it.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

350. “Debt is to man what the serpent is to the bird; its eye fascinates, its breath poisons, its coil crushes sinew and bone, its jaw is the pitiless grave.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton