01c. 1839 ADThe Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but few are the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to whom it is no foreign tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but rather a native language, learned unconsciously from the lips of the great mother.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
02c. 1839 ADThe law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty it hits some one else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
03c. 1839 ADLife is a quaint puzzle. Bits the most incongruous join into each other, and the scheme thus gradually becomes symmetrical and clear; when, lo! as the infant clasps his hands, and cries, "See, see! the puzzle is made out," all the pieces are swept back into the box—black box with the gilded nails!Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
04c. 1839 ADIt seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring—the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It may be slow and gradual; it may be quick and sudden. But in the morning, when we wake and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees, blossoms on the sward, warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, we say spring has come.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
05c. 1839 ADLove is the most dunder-headed of all the passions; it never will listen to reason. The very rudiments of logic are unknown to it. "Love has no wherefore," says one of the Latin poets.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
06c. 1839 ADHope nothing from luck, and the probability is that you will be so prepared, forewarned, and forearmed, that all shallow observers will call you lucky.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
07c. 1839 ADFew natures can preserve through years the poetry of the first passionate illusion. That can alone render wedlock the seal that confirms affection, and not the mocking ceremonial that consecrates its grave.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
08c. 1839 ADA mind once cultivated will not lie fallow for half an hour.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
09c. 1839 ADIn all meanness there is a deficit of intellect as well as of heart, and even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
10c. 1839 ADI was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
11c. 1839 ADNature has no mind; every man who addresses her is compelled to force upon her for a moment the loan of his own mind. And if she answers a question which his own mind puts to her, it is only by such a reply as his own mind teaches to her parrot-like lips. And as every man has a different mind, so every man gets a different answer.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
12c. 1839 ADNature,—a thing which science and art never appear to see with the same eyes. If to an artist Nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all matter that it contemplates; science turns all that is already gifted with soul into matter.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
13c. 1839 ADThe same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
14c. 1839 ADLove is on the verge of hate each time it stoops for pardon.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
15c. 1839 AD"All the passions," says an old writer, "are such near neighbors, that if one of them is on fire the others should send for the buckets." Thus love and hate being both passions, the one is never safe from the spark that sets the other ablaze. But contempt is passionless; it does not catch, it quenches fire.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
16c. 1839 ADIt is the excess and not the nature of our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grow by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they wither away.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
17c. 1839 ADThere is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name and we call it patience.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
18c. 1839 ADEvery man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
19c. 1839 ADIt is a maxim received among philosophers themselves from the days of Aristotle down to those of Sir William Hamilton, that philosophy ceases where truth is acknowledged.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
20c. 1839 ADAt court one becomes a sort of human ant-eater, and learns to catch one's prey by one's tongue.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
21c. 1839 ADIt is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest passions of mean confederates.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
22c. 1839 ADPower is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
23c. 1839 ADAs a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
24c. 1839 ADWhat is the essence and the life of character? Principle, integrity, independence, or, as one of our great old writers has it, "that inbred loyalty unto virtue which can serve her without a livery."Edward Bulwer Lytton / quote ↗
