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 will find him the cheapest.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Dress
In life, as in whist, hope nothing from the way cards may be dealt to you. Play the cards, whatever they be, to the best of your skill.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Self-reliance, Life
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 shapes of grace.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Art
A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes today.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Fresh, The Present, Ideas, Mind, The Mind, Progress
The public man needs but one patron, namely, the lucky moment.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Opportunity, Luck
Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Anger
Do ye not laugh, O, listening friends, when men praise those dead whose virtues they discovered not when living?—It takes much marble to build the sepulchre.—How little of lath and plaster would have repaired the garret!
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Epitaphs
Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing.—Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Strike from mankind the principle of faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Faith, Belief
No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Humanity
Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow, whether raised at a puppet-show, a funeral, or a battle, is your grandest of levelers.—The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man’s envy, and wounds no man’s self-love.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Silence
“But” 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, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Words
The real truthfulness of all works of imagination,—sculpture, painting, and written fiction, is so purely in the imagination, that the artist never seeks to represent positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Art
Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Ideas
There is certainly something of exquisite kindness and thoughtful benevolence in that rarest of gifts,—fine breeding.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Manners
All the passions, says an old writer, “are such near neighbors, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets.” Thus love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Passion
We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Age, Time
A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Heart, Kindness
Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Reason
A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Pleasure
Patience is the courage of the conqueror, the strength of man against destiny—of the one against the world, and of the soul against matter.—Therefore it is the courage of the gospel; and its importance, in a social view and to races and institutions, cannot be too earnestly inculcated.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Patience
The more a man desirous to pass at a value above his worth, and can, by dignified silence, contrast with the garrulity of trivial minds, the more will the world give him credit for the wealth he does not possess.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Silence
To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: The Poor, Character, Heart, Poverty
In families well ordered there is always one firm, sweet temper, which controls without seeming to dictate. The Greeks represented Persuasion as crowned.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Influence
Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Liberty
In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Beauty
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.—It is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes.—It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Passion, Genius, Enthusiasm
He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Repentance
Money never can be well managed if sought solely through the greed of money for its own sake. In all meanness there is a defect of intellect as well as of heart. And even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- William Ewart Gladstone English Liberal Statesman
- Benjamin Disraeli British Head of State
- Thomas Buxton, 1st Baronet British Religious Figure
- J. B. Priestley British Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
- William Congreve English Dramatist
- John Dryden English Poet
- John Gay English Poet, Dramatist
- Robert Browning English Poet
- Augustine Birrell English Politician, Essayist
- Colley Cibber English Playwright
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