Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton's Quotes

Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

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

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.

There is no such thing as luck. It's a fancy name for being always at our duty, and so sure to be ready when good time comes.

Truth makes on the ocean of nature no one track of light; every eye, looking on, finds its own.

Art and science have their meeting point in method.

Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.

I cannot love as I have loved, And yet I know not why; It is the one great woe of life To feel all feeling die.

If thou be industrious to procure wealth, be generous in the disposal of it. Man never is so happy as when he giveth happiness unto another.

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.

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

One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.

The easiest person to deceive is one's self.

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

The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.

There is nothing certain in a man's life but that he must lose it.

Two lives that once part are as ships that divide.

What mankind wants is not talent; it is purpose.

What ever our wandering our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and in the middle of the objects more immediately within our reach.

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.

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.

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.

A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.