Edward Bulwer-Lytton Quotes

The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan.

Books are waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.

A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.

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.

It is not Wisdom, but Ignorance, which teaches men presumption; Genius may be sometimes arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as Knowledge.

Little minds give importance to the man who gives importance to nothing.

Alone!—that worn-out word,
So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing, and grief hath known,
Of hope laid waste, knells in that word ALONE!

The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.

Buy my flowers—O buy—I pray!
The blind girl comes from afar;
If the earth be as fair as her children say,
These flowers her children are!

It is not study alone that produces a writer; it is Intensity.

To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest student of knowledge should be unknown.

Memory, no less than hope, owes its charm to "the far-away."

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.

Light literature,—that grace and flower of human culture, that best philosophy of all, humanizing us with gentle art, making us wise through the humours, elevated through the passions, tender in the affections of our kind.

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!"