# Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873) was an English novelist, playwright, and politician.

## Quotes

* The Wind and the Beam loved the Rose, And the Rose loved one: For who recks the Wind where it blows? Or loves not the Sun?None knew whence the humble Wind stole, Poor sport of the skies: None dreamt that the Wind had a soul In its mournful sighs.O happy Beam, how canst thou prove That bright love of thine? In thy light is the proof of thy love, Thou hast but to shine.How its love can the Wind reveal? Unwelcome its sigh: Mute, mute to the Rose let it steal— Its proof is—to die!
** "Nydia’s Song", often anthologised, including by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1912)
* Two lives that once part, are as ships that divide When, moment on moment there rushes between    The one and the other, a sea,— Ah, never can fall from the days that have been    A gleam on the years that shall be.
** "A Lament", in The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Sir Edward Bulmer Lytton, Bart, Vol. III (London: Chapman & Hall, 1853), p. 226
** Compare "Ships that pass in the night", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), Part III, "The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth", IV.

### The Disowned (1828)

* There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.
** Chapter III
* A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
** Chapter XXXIII
* The easiest person to deceive is one’s own self.
** Chapter XLII
* It is not Wisdom, but Ignorance, which teaches men presumption; Genius may be sometimes arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as Knowledge.
** Chapter LXII

### Paul Clifford (1830)

* He is certainly a man who bathes and "lives cleanly," (two especial charges preferred against him by Messrs. the Great Unwashed).
** Dedicatory Epistle
** This is the origin of the rather derogatory phrase, "the great unwashed".
* 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.
** Book I, Chapter I
** "It was a dark and stormy night" is probably the most parodied and ridiculed opening line in literature. It is the inspiration for a satirical prize, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, and was used by Charles M. Schultz in the Peanuts cartoons.
* Repent!—that is the idlest word in our language.
** Book I, Chapter XVIII

### Eugene Aram (1832)

* Poverty makes some humble, but more malignant.
** Book I, Chapter VII
* The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells.
** Book I, Chapter VII
* Love is a very contradiction of all the elements of our ordinary nature: it makes the proud man meek,—the cheerful, sad,—the high-spirited, tame; our strongest resolutions, our hardiest energy, fall before it. Believe me, you cannot prophesy of its future effect in a man from any knowledge of his past character.
** Book I, Chapter X
* Fate laughs at probabilities.
** Book I, Chapter X.

### The Last Days of Pompeii (1834)

* 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!
** "The Blind Flower-Girl's Song", in Book I, Chapter II
* He who has loved often has loved never.
** Book I, Chapter II
* Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus—it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
** Book I, Chapter VIII
* There is no tongue that flatters like a lover's; and yet, in the exaggeration of his feelings, flattery seems to him commonplace.
** Book III, Chapter IX

### Ernest Maltravers (1837)

* The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.
** Book I, Chapter XIV
* Books are waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.
** Book I, Chapter XV
* There is no anguish like an error of which we feel ashamed.
** Book II, Chapter III
* When stars are in the quiet skies,  Then most I pine for thee; Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes,  As stars look on the sea!
** "Night and Love", in Book III, Chapter I

### Alice, or The Mysteries (1838)

* Beauty, thou art twice blessed; thou blessest the gazer and the possessor; often at once the effect and the cause of goodness! A sweet disposition—a lovely soul—an affectionate nature—will speak in the eyes—the lips—the brows—and become the cause of beauty. On the other hand, they who have a gift that commands love, a key that opens all hearts, are ordinarily inclined to look with happy eyes upon the world—to be cheerful and serene—to hope and to confide. There is more wisdom than the vulgar dream of in our admiration of a fair face.
** Book II, Chapter I
* There is an old age which has more youth of heart than youth itself!
** Book V, Chapter I
* When the People have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.
** Book VI, Chapter V

### The Lady of Lyons (1838)

* Castles in the air cost a vast deal to keep up.
** Act I, Scene III
* Rank is a great beautifier.
** Act II, Scene I
* Curse away! And let me tell thee, Beauseant, a wise proverb The Arabs have,—"Curses are like young chickens, And still come home to roost!"
** Act V, Scene II

### Richelieu (1839)

* You speak As one who fed on poetry.
** Act I, Scene I
* Love hath no need of words.
** Act I, Scene II
* Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword.
** Act II, Scene II
** This is the origin of the much quoted phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword". Compare: "Hinc quam sic calamus sævior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i. Sect. 2, Memb. 4, Subsect. 4.
* Take away the sword— States can be saved without it!
** Act II, Scene II
* Ambition has no risk.
** Act III, Scene I
* In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves For a bright manhood, there is no such word As "fail".
** Act III, Scene I
* Our glories float between the earth and heaven Like clouds which seem pavilions of the sun, And are the playthings of the casual wind.
** Act V, Scene III

### Night and Morning (1841)

* When a person's down in the world, I think an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.
** Book I, Chapter VI
* The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan.
** Book I, Chapter VI
* Little minds give importance to the man who gives importance to nothing.
** Book IV, Chapter VII

### Zanoni (1842)

* Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.
** Book II, Chapter VI
* To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest student of knowledge should be unknown.
** Book III, Chapter IV
* Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance.
** Book IV, Chapter IV
* We commenced research where modern conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were the common elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries.
** Book V, Chapter X, Letter I
** Quoted by H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Part One, Science, Ch. 1 (1877)
* Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue.
** Book VII, Chapter XVI

### The Last of the Barons (1843)

* Happy the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame—to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!
** Book V, Chapter I
* Though Hope be a small child, she can carry a great anchor!
** Book VIII, Chapter IV
* Night, to the earnest soul, opens the Bible of the Universe, and on the leaves of Heaven is written,—"God is everywhere!"
** Book IX, Chapter V
* "It is destiny!"—phrase of the weak human heart! "It is destiny!"—dark apology for every error! The strong and virtuous admit no destiny! On earth, guides Conscience—in heaven, watches God. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one—to dethrone the other!
** Book X, Chapter VI

### Lucretia (1846)

* Light literature,—that grace and flower of human culture, that best philosophy of all, humanizing us with gentle art, making us wise through the humours, elevated through the passions, tender in the affections of our kind.
** Part I, Epilogue
* The most useless creature that ever yawned at a club, or counted the vermin on his rags under the suns of Calabria, has no excuse for want of intellect. What men want is not talent, it is purpose,—in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labour.
** Part II, Chapter XII
* 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.
** Part II, Chapter XII

### The New Timon (1846)

* The brilliant chief, irregularly great, Frank, haughty, rash,— the Rupert of debate!
** Part I, Section III
** In April, 1844, Benjamin Disraeli thus alluded to Lord Stanley: “The noble lord is the Rupert of debate.”
* Alone!—that worn-out word, So idly spoken, and so coldly heard; Yet all that poets sing, and grief hath known, Of hope laid waste, knells in that word ALONE!
** Part II, Section II
* Love gains the shrine when Pity opes the door.
** Part III, Section II
* He never errs who sacrifices self.
** Part IV, Section III

### The Caxtons (1849)

* Childhood and genius have the same master-organ in common—inquisitiveness. Let childhood have its way, and as it began where genius begins, it may find what genius finds.
** Part I, Chapter IV
* Master books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.
** Part II, Chapter I
* It is not study alone that produces a writer; it is Intensity.
** Part III, Chapter V
* We cannot think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before, points the way. The dead never die.
** Part IV, Chapter I
* Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors.
** Part IV, Chapter II
* It is an inevitable law that a man, in spite of himself, should live for something higher than his own happiness. He cannot live in himself or for himself, however egotistical he may try to be. Every desire he has links him with others.
** Part VI, Chapter I

### A Strange Story (1850)

* The heart loves repose and the soul contemplation, but the mind needs action.
** Chapter LX
* Believe me that the happiest act of intellect, however lofty, is that which enables it to be cheerfully at home with the Real!
** Chapter LXXIII
* Be prepared for either wisdom through joy, or wisdom through grief. Enough that, looking only through the mechanism by which this mortal world is impelled and improved, you know that cruelty is impossible to wisdom.
** Chapter LXXIX

### Caxtoniana (1862)

* The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who, early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.
** Essay VII. On the Management of Money
* In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.
** Essay X. Hints on Mental Culture
* Truth makes on the ocean of nature no one track of light—every eye looking on finds its own.
** Essay XIV. On Essay-writing in General, and these Essays in Particular
* Strike from mankind the principle of Faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep.
** Essay XVIII. Faith and Charity

### The Coming Race (1870)

    Main article: The Coming Race
* My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.
** Chapter I
** This is the origin of the phrase "pursuit of the almighty dollar". Washington Irving coined the expression almighty dollar itself.

### Kenelm Chillingly (1873)

* A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day.
** Book I, Chapter VIII
* Life consists in the alternate process of learning and unlearning; but it is often wiser to unlearn than to learn.
** Book IV, Chapter VII
* There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially the mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet mood.
** Book V, Chapter IV
* Memory, no less than hope, owes its charm to "the far-away."
** Book V, Chapter IV
* The good man does good merely by living.
** Book VIII, Chapter VIII

## Quotes about Edward Bulwer-Lytton

* This demonstrates an energy of exertion, a fecundity of invention, and a readiness of composition rarely to be met with; and when taken in connexion with the unquestionable excellence of several of his works, fairly entitles him to rank as one of the most extraordinary geniuses of the age. He is, undoubtedly, in prose, whether we regard his matter or his style, one of the best of our living writers. His poetry, however, is beneath mediocrity, and cannot but produce in the minds of the thousands who have read his novels with delight, a regret that he should waste his time in putting together such an heterogeneous and unmeaning mass of metre and rhyme as is contained in the "Siamese Twins," and some other of his poems. As a novelist, he is, without doubt, the most popular writer now living.
** 'Novel Writing', American Quarterly Review, No. XXXII (December 1834), p. 507
* You could not have the Victorian Age without him. And this was not due to wholly superficial things like his dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real touchstone of the time.
** G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature (1913), p. 136
* Of his own books, by far the best are the really charming comedies about The Caxtons and Kenelm Chillingley; none of his other works have a high literary importance now; with the possible exception of A Strange Story; but his Coming Race is historically interesting as foreshadowing those novels of the future which were afterwards such a weapon of the Socialists.
** G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature (1913), p. 137
* Men crowded to the House of Commons to hear the latest performance of "the orator of the century." Epigrams, antithesis, alliteration—all the conscious tricks of the trade—were packed into his ornate harangues, which no one now remembers.
** Lord Curzon, Modern Parliamentary Eloquence: The Rede Lecture, delivered before the University of Cambridge, November 6, 1913 (1914), p. 56
* He [Charles Greville] was the vainest being—I don't limit myself to man—that ever existed; and I don't forget Cicero and Lytton Bulwer.
** Benjamin Disraeli to Lady Bradford (26 October 1874), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (1929), p. 688
* To complete the tale of my writings at this period, I may add that in 1833, at the request of Bulwer, who was just then completing his England and the English (a work, at that time, greatly in advance of the public mind), I wrote for him a critical account of Bentham's philosophy, a small part of which he incorporated in his text, and printed the rest (with an honourable acknowledgment), as an appendix In this, along with the favourable, a part also of the unfavourable side of my estimation of Bentham's doctrines, considered as a complete philosophy, was for the first time put into print.
** John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (1873), p. 198
* The sensation that is excited in the literary world by the simple announcement of a new work emanating from the pen of the talented E. L. Bulwer, is the precursor of the delight to be experienced by the perusal. Bulwer is the Napoleon of English literature—the great mover of that sphere in which he shines so resplendently—the individual whose magic quill, with one single drop of ink, can make thousands reflect. He is the metaphysician-novelist of England, as de Balzac is the pride of France. His works are not merely everyday books which we throw aside never to resume, after a hasty perusal: they are standard volumes in every library—they may occasionally serve as books of reference—their philosophy raises them to an eminence far above the common tale of interest purposely written to afford a momentary amusement.
** The Monthly Magazine, Vol. XXIV, No. 143 (November 1837), p. 541
* [William Henry] Harrison was speaking to Beckford about Bulwer. "A coxcomb", says Harrison. "Ay," said Beckford, "a cultivated one, and blows double!" Everybody has a spite at Bulwer because the public think him clever, and they don't.
** John Ruskin, diary entry (31 May 1840), quoted in The Diaries of John Ruskin, 1835–1847, eds. John Evans and John Howard Whitehouse (1956), p. 82
* Lytton is one of the authors upon whose merits the critics have never agreed with the public. He won immense popularity in the face of generally hostile criticism, and even his success failed to obtain a reversal of the judgment. Some of his qualities, however, are incontestable. No English author has displayed more industry, energy, versatility, or less disposition to lapse into slovenliness. His last works are among his best; and though he often tried the experiment of publishing anonymously (as in The Caxtons and The Coming Race), his success showed that his popularity did not depend upon his previous fame.
** Leslie Stephen, 'Lytton, Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-', Dictionary of National Biography, Volume XXXIV. Llwyd—Maccartney, ed. Sidney Lee (1893), pp. 385-386
* Lytton showed courage but hardly discretion in attempting to be more of a poet or philosopher than nature had made him. He had enough talent to convince himself that he had the genius which is above talent. He wrote some excellent verses in the style of Pope, but fancied that he could also be a Spenser. His characters show more shrewdness of observation than imaginative insight, and the stories, while most carefully designed and constructed, show, not creative impulse, but dexterous management and a quick eye for dramatic effect. His curious attempts at the mysterious too often remind us of spirit-rapping rather than excite the thrill of supernatural awe. He scarcely fails, however, unequivocally, unless in his attempts at the humorous or the descriptions of the lower orders. He shows so much ability and such sustained activity of thought that the critic feels some hesitation in disputing too strongly the claims of his admirers, and only regrets that he had not written at least one novel expressing his views of life frankly and vigorously, without aiming at the ideal or at the propitiation of the respectable. It might have been less edifying, but would certainly have been more interesting than his actual achievements.
** Leslie Stephen, 'Lytton, Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-', Dictionary of National Biography, Volume XXXIV. Llwyd—Maccartney, ed. Sidney Lee (1893), p. 386

## External links

* Edward Bulwer-Lytton Books
* Works by Edward Bulwer-Lytton at Project Gutenberg