Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton Quotes

In the lives of most women and men
There's a moment when all would go smooth and even,
If only the dead could find out when
To come back and be forgiven.

There's no weapon that slays
Its victim so surely (if well aim'd) as praise.

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

Rest is sweet after strife.

Those true eyes
Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise
The sweet soul shining through them.

Since we parted, yester eve,
I do love thee, love, believe,
Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer,
One dream deeper, one night stronger,
One sun surer,—thus much more
Than I loved thee, love, before.

No star ever rose
And set, without influence somewhere.

Then did I feel as one who, much perplext,
Led by strange legends and the light of stars
Over long regions of the midnight sand
Beyond the red tract of the Pyramids,
Is suddenly drawn to look upon the sky
From sense of unfamiliar light, and sees
Reveal'd against the constellated cope
The great cross of the South.

Words, however, are things: and the man who accords
To his language the license to outrage his soul
Is controll'd by the words he disdains to control.

Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.

We gain
Justice, judgment, with years, or else years are in vain.

That man is great, and he alone,
Who serves a greatness not his own.

Alas! must it be ever so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?

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

There is a pleasure which is born of pain.