Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) was a British novelist, poet, and politician. Judged by his contemporaries a rival to Charles Dickens, this popular and productive novelist frequently broke new ground for the novel.
Born in London Bulwer-Lytton is most famous as the author of lengthy novels such as Falkland (1827,) Pelham: or The Adventures of a Gentleman (1828,) Eugene Aram (1832,) The Last Days of Pompeii (1834,) and Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings (1848.) These novels won him immediate success and made him an affluent man.
Bulwer-Lytton entered Parliament representing St. Ives, Huntingdonshire, first as a Whig MP 1831–41 and, under the influence of Benjamin Disraeli, a Conservative MP 1851–66. He served as Secretary of State for the Colonies 1858–59, and was one of the founders of British Columbia. Even while he stayed an active politician, he found time to produce many novels, plays, and poems.
Bulwer-Lytton coined the catchphrases “the great unwashed,” “pursuit of the almighty dollar,” “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and “dweller on the threshold.” His novel Paul Clifford (1830) opens with one of the most famous opening lines in all of English literature: “It was a dark and stormy night….”
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Doubt, Letters
It is not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age of the heart.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Age
We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth.—There is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beings that now pass over before us like shadows, will stay in our presence forever.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Immortality
Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Genius, Observation
Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Remorse
A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Flattery
In these days, half our diseases come from the neglect of the body in the over work of the brain. In this railway age, the wear and tear of labor and intellect go on without pause or self-pity. We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles, we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Health, Disease, Stress
The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Upon any given point, contradictory evidence seldom puzzles the man who has mastered the laws of evidence, but he knows little of the laws of evidence who has not studied the unwritten law of the human heart; and without this last knowledge a man of action will not attain to the practical, nor will a poet achieve the ideal.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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
In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature the oldest. The classic literature is always modern. New books revive and redecorate old ideas; old books suggest and invigorate new ideas.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Books, Literature, Reading
There are two things in life, that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach, and the enamel of his teeth.—Some evils admit of consolations, but there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Health
No reproach is like that we clothe in a smile, and present with a bow.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
There is scarcely a good critic of books born in our age, and yet every fool thinks himself justified in criticising persons.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Critics
It is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty that vice cannot obtain a lodging. When she knocks at your door be able to say: “No room for your ladyship; pass on.”
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Vice
Every street has two sides, the shady side and the sunny. When two men shake hands and part, mark which of the two takes the sunny side; he will be the younger man of the two.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Choice, Choices
There is so little to redeem the dry mass of follies and errors that make up so much of life, that anything to love or reverence becomes, as it were, a sabbath to the soul.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Affection
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
A ballroom is nothing more or less than a great market place of beauty.—For my part, were I a buyer, I should like making my purchases in a less public mart.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Dancing
He who would keep himself to himself should imitate the dumb animals, and drink water.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Give, and you may keep your friend it you lose your money; lend, and the chances are that you lose your friend if ever you get back your money
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Giving
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, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Conscience
Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Health
Extemporaneous speaking is, indeed, the groundwork of the orator’s art; preparation is the last finish, and the most difficult of all his accomplishments. To learn by heart as a schoolboy, or to prepare as an orator, are two things, not only essentially different, but essentially antagonistic to each other; for the work most opposed to an effective oration is an elegant essay.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
It is astonishing how well men wear when they think of no one but themselves.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Selfishness
What we call eternity may be but an endless series of the transitions which men call deaths, abandonments of home, going ever to fairer scenes and loftier heights.—Age after age, the spirit—that glorious nomad—may shift its tent, carrying with it evermore its elements, activity and desire.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Eternity
Thought presides over all.—Fate, that dead phantom, shall vanish from action, and providence alone be visible in heaven and on earth.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Fate
It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Enemy, Enemies, Friendship
Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Light
It seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring—the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It may be slow and gradual; it may be quick and sudden. But in the morning, when we wake and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees, blossoms on the sward, warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, we say spring has come.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Topics: Love
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