Edward Bulwer-Lytton Quotes

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

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

Night, to the earnest soul, opens the Bible of the Universe, and on the leaves of Heaven is written,—"God is everywhere!"

Love hath no need of words.

When the People have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

He who has loved often has loved never.

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!

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

We cannot think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before, points the way. The dead never die.

Believe me that the happiest act of intellect, however lofty, is that which enables it to be cheerfully at home with the Real!

Why should the soul ever repose? God, its Principle, reposes never. While we speak, new worlds are sparkling forth—suns are throwing off their nebulae—nebulae are hardening into worlds. The Almighty proves His existence by creating.

Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.

He is certainly a man who bathes and "lives cleanly," (two especial charges preferred against him by Messrs. the Great Unwashed).

Life consists in the alternate process of learning and unlearning; but it is often wiser to unlearn than to learn.