Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton Quotes

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “how right you were to tell me to marry respectably; to have a solid position; to live in decorous fear of the world and one’s wife; and to command the envy of the poor, the good opinion of the rich. You have practised what you preach.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“The art of medicine will then be honoured in the place of war, which is the art of murder: the noblest study of the acutest minds will be devoted to the discovery and arrest of the causes of disease. Life, I grant, cannot be made eternal; but it may be prolonged almost indefinitely. And as the meaner animal bequeaths its vigour to its offspring, so man shall transmit his improved organisation, mental and physical, to his sons.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“It is past twelve; I always write to you at night. It is then, my own love, that my imagination can be the more readily transport me to you: it is then that my spirit holds with you a more tender and undivided commune. In the day the world can force itself upon my thoughts, and its trifles usurp the place which “I love to keep for only thee and Heaven;” but in the night all things recall you the more vividly: the stillness of the gentle skies, — the blandness of the unbroken air, — the stars, so holy in their loveliness, all speak and breathe to me of you. I think your hand is clasped in mine; and I again drink the low music of your voice, and imbibe again in the air the breath which has been perfumed by your lips. You seem to stand in my lonely chamber in the light and stillness of a spirit, who has wandered on earth to teach us the love which is felt in Heaven.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“It is the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The struggles between the boa and the lion are past: the boa has consumed the lion, and is heavy with the gorge,”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“La loi, dont le regne vous epouvante, a son glaive leve sur vous:     elle vous frappera tous:  le genre humain a besoin de cet     exemple. — Couthon.       (The law, whose reign terrifies you, has its sword raised against     you; it will strike you all:  humanity has need of this example.)”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Almanzor, in Dryden’s tragedy of “Almahide,” did not change sides with more gallant indifference than the exemplary nurse.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“But dream not of freedom for the whole while you enslave the parts; the heart must be the centre of the system, the blood must circulate freely everywhere; and in vast communities you behold but a bloated and feeble giant, whose brain is imbecile, whose limbs are dead, and who pays in disease and weakness the penalty of transcending the natural proportions of health and vigour.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“If,” answered Mejnour, “before one property of herbalism was known to them, a stranger had visited a wandering tribe, — if he had told the savages that the herbs, which every day they trampled underfoot, were endowed with the most potent virtues; that one would restore to health a brother on the verge of death; that another would paralyze into idiocy their wisest sage; that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their most stalwart champion; that tears and laughter, vigor and disease, madness and reason, wakefulness and sleep, existence and dissolution, were coiled up in those unregarded leaves, — would they not have held him a sorcerer or a liar? To half the virtues of the vegetable world mankind are yet in the darkness of the savages I have supposed. There are faculties within us with which certain herbs have affinity, and over which they have power. The moly of the ancients was not all a fable.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“In the laws which regulate the Universe it is decreed that nothing wicked can long endure. Be wise, and let history warn thee. Thou standest on the verge of two worlds, — the Past and the Future; and voices from either shriek omen in thy ear. I have done. I bid thee farewell.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Merton, gazing on his face, saw that a great change had passed there. The flexile and dubious expression of youth was forever gone; the features were locked, rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom that an hour seemed to have done the work of years.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Consult not your friend; he is sensible and wise, but not now is his wisdom needed. There are times in life when from the imagination, and not the reason, should wisdom come, — this for you is one of them.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“The Ides are come, not gone.” “Tush! if he is a soothsayer, you are not Caesar. It is your vanity that makes you credulous. Thank Heaven, I do not think myself of such importance that the operations of Nature should be changed in order to frighten me.” “But why should the operations of Nature be changed? There may be a deeper philosophy than we dream of, — a philosophy that discovers the secrets of Nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Our opinions, young Englishman, are the angel part of us; our acts the earthly.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Young man, Destiny is less inexorable than it appears. The resources of the great Ruler of the Universe are not so scanty and so stern as to deny to men the divine privilege of Free Will; all of us can carve out our own way, and God can make our very contradictions harmonize with His solemn ends.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“The room was small; a few phials and some dried herbs were ranged in shelves on the wall, which was hung with snow-white cloth of coarse texture. From the shelves Zicci selected one of the phials, and poured the contents into a crystal cup. The liquid was colorless, and sparkled rapidly up in bubbles of light; it almost seemed to evaporate ere it reached his lips. But when the strange beverage was quaffed, a sudden change was visible in the countenance of Zicci: his beauty became yet more dazzling, his eyes shone with intense fire, and his form seemed to grow more youthful and ethereal.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Oh, when shall men learn, at last, that if the Great Religion inculcates so rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is not alone that FAITH leads to the world to be; but that without faith there is no excellence in this, — faith in something wiser, happier, diviner, than we see on earth! — the artist calls it the Ideal, — the priest, Faith. The Ideal and Faith are one and the same. Return, O wanderer, return! Feel what beauty and holiness dwell in the Customary and the Old. Back to thy gateway glide, thou Horror! and calm, on the childlike heart, smile again, O azure Heaven, with thy night and thy morning star but as one, though under its double name of Memory and Hope!”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“In most criminals, however abandoned, there are touches of humanity, — relics of virtue; and the true delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad hearts and dull minds, for showing that even the worst alloy has some particles of gold, and even the best that come stamped from the mint of Nature have some adulteration of the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to the general rule, — exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and when good or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfish end. So was it with the protege of the atheist. Envy and hate filled up his whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only made him curse the more all who passed him in the sunlight with a fairer form or happier fortunes.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“I learn how great hearts feel what sweetness and glory there is to die for the things they love! I saw a father sacrificing himself for his son; he was subjected to charges which a word of his could dispel, — he was mistaken for his boy. With what joy he seized the error, confessed the noble crimes of valour and fidelity which the son had indeed committed, and went to the doom, exulting that his death saved the life he had given, not in vain!”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“What a twofold shape there is in love! If we examine it coarsely, — if we look but on its fleshy ties, its enjoyments of a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction, — how strange it seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the world; that it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influenced all societies and all times; that to this the loftiest and loveliest genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love, there were no civilisation, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond the brute’s.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“There is a principle of the soul, superior to all nature, through     which we are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the     world.  When the soul is elevated to natures better than itself,     THEN it is entirely separated from subordinate natures, exchanges     this for another life, and, deserting the order of things with     which it was connected, links and mingles itself with another.   — Iamblichus.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“He was to know THE RENEWAL OF LIFE; the seasons that chilled to winter should yet bring again the bloom and the mirth of spring. Man’s common existence is as one year to the vegetable world: he has his spring, his summer, his autumn, and winter, — but only ONCE.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Dost thou think,” said Mejnour, “that I would give to the mere pupil, whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might change the face of the social world? The last secrets are intrusted only to him of whose virtue the Master is convinced. Patience! It is labour itself that is the great purifier of the mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow upon thyself as thy mind becomes riper to receive them.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Discover what will destroy life, and you are a great man! — what will prolong it, and you are an imposter! Discover some invention in machinery that will make the rich more rich and the poor more poor, and they will build you a statue! Discover some mystery in art that will equalise physical disparities, and they will pull down their own houses to stone you!”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Oh, Mother of Mercy! there came across my way a funeral procession! There, now you know it; I can tell you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Can you guess how I spent that night? — I stole a pickaxe from a mason’s shed, and all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens, I dug the fresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin, I wrenched the lid, I saw her again — again! Decay had not touched her. She was always pale in life! I could have sworn she lived! It was a blessed thing to see her once more, and all alone too! But then, at dawn, to give her back to the earth, — to close the lid, to throw down the mould, to hear the pebbles rattle on the coffin: that was dreadful! Signor, I never knew before, and I don’t wish to think now, how valuable a thing human life is.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“And thinkest thou, Viola, that in a mere act of science there is so much virtue? The commonest leech will tend the sick for his fee. Are prayers and blessings a less reward than gold?”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“The colour revived rapidly on the lips and cheeks; in a few moments the sufferer slept calmly, and with the regular breathing of painless sleep. And then the old man rose, rigidly, as a corpse might rise, — looked down, listened, and creeping gently away, stole to the corner of the room, and wept, and thanked Heaven! Now, old Bernardi had been, hitherto, but a cold believer; sorrow had never before led him aloft from earth. Old as he was, he had never before thought as the old should think of death, — that endangered life of the young had wakened up the careless soul of age.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Law! If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood they could not make it LAW. Level all conditions to-day, and you only smooth away all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that aspires to EQUALITY is unfit for FREEDOM. Throughout all creation, from the archangel to the worm, from Olympus to the pebble, from the radiant and completed planet to the nebula that hardens through ages of mist and slime into the habitable world, the first law of Nature is inequality.” “Harsh doctrine, if applied to states. Are the cruel disparities of life never to be removed?” “Disparities of the PHYSICAL life? Oh, let us hope so. But disparities of the INTELLECTUAL and the MORAL, never! Universal equality of intelligence, of mind, of genius, of virtue! — no teacher left to the world! no men wiser, better than others, — were it not an impossible condition, WHAT A HOPELESS PROSPECT FOR HUMANITY! No, while the world lasts, the sun will gild the mountain-top before it shines upon the plain. Diffuse all the knowledge the earth contains equally over all mankind to-day, and some men will be wiser than the rest to-morrow. And THIS is not a harsh, but a loving law, — the REAL law of improvement; the wiser the few in one generation, the wiser will be the multitude the next!”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Opinion was to be free as air; and in order to make it so, it was necessary to exterminate all those whose opinions were not the same as Mons. Jean Nicot’s.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Monsieur Nicot proceeded to read and to comment upon several animated and interesting passages in his correspondence, in which the word virtue was introduced twenty-seven times, and God not once.”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Man cannot contradict the Laws of Nature. But are all the laws of Nature yet discovered?”
― Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Complete Works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton