Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 – 1873)
English novelist, playwright, and politician.
You speak
As one who fed on poetry.
In science, read, by preference the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classics are always modern.
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 to-day.
A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells.
Our glories float between the earth and heaven
Like clouds which seem pavilions of the sun.
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.
Fate laughs at probabilities.
Alone! — that worn-out word,
So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing and grief hath known
Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word ALONE!
The easiest person to deceive is one’s own self.
Memory, no less than hope, owes its charm to “the far away.”
Take away the sword;
States can be saved without it.
Truth makes on the surface of nature no one track of light — every eye looking on finds its own.
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Curse away!
And let me tell thee, Beauseant, a wise proverb
The Arabs have,—"Curses are like young chickens,
And still come home to roost."
In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves
For a bright manhood, there is no such word
As "fail".
Buy my flowers,—oh buy, I pray!
The blind girl comes from afar.
My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.
The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan.