Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton Quotes

We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man can not live without cooks.
He may live without books,—what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope—what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love,—what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?

No star ever rose
And set, without influence somewhere.

But, however we pass Time, he passes still,
Passing away whatever the pastime,
And, whether we use him well or ill,
Some day he gives us the slip for the last time.

Rest is sweet after strife.

A night of tears! for the gusty rain
Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet;
And the moon look'd forth, as tho' in pain,
With her face al white and wet.

Who seeks for aid
Must show how service sought can be repaid.

The ages roll
Forward; and, forward with them, draw my soul Into Time’s infinite sea.
And to be glad or sad I care no more:
But to have done, and to have been, before I cease to do and be!

And the jasmin-flower in her fair young breast:
(O the faint, sweet smell of that jasmin-flower!)
And the one bird singing alone in his nest:
And the one star over the tower.

O be very sure
That no man will learn anything at all,
Unless he first will learn humility.

When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart,
When it thrills as it fills every animate part,
Where lurks it? How works it?.. we scarcely detect it.

There is purpose in pain,
Otherwise it were devilish.

I loved you ere I knew you: know you now,
And, having known you, love you better still.

Life is good; but not life in itself.

The world is a nettle; disturb it, it stings.
Grasp it firmly, it stings not.

The thing which must be, must be for the best.