23 Quotes & Sayings By Edward Bulwerlytton

Edward Robert Lytton was an English novelist and playwright who is best known for his works Zanoni (1842), The Coming Race (1871), and Pelham (1832). He is also well known for breathing life into the fictional character Vizzini, the evil villain of The Princess Bride, who belongs to a family of evil, corrupt, clever henchmen.

To find what you seek in the road of life,...
1
To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says:" Leave no stone unturned. Edward BulwerLytton
The pen is mightier than the sword!
2
The pen is mightier than the sword! Edward BulwerLytton
He who studies old books will always find in them...
3
He who studies old books will always find in them something new, and he who reads new books will always find in them something old. Edward BulwerLytton
4
Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies. Edward BulwerLytton
5
And that date, too, is far off?'' Far off; when it comes, think your end in this world is at hand! '' How and what is the end? Look east, west, south and north.'' In the north, where you never yet trod, towards the point whence your instincts have warned you, there a spectre will seize you. 'Tis Death! I see a ship - it is haunted - 'tis chased - it sails on. Baffled navies sail after that ship. It enters the regions of ice. It passes a sky red with meteors. Two moons stand on high, over ice-reefs. I see the ship locked between white defiles - they are ice-rocks. I see the dead strew the decks - stark and livid, green mold on their limbs. All are dead, but one man - it is you! But years, though so slowly they come, have then scathed you. There is the coming of age on your brow, and the will is relaxed in the cells of the brain. Still that will, though enfeebled, exceeds all that man knew before you, through the will you live on, gnawed with famine; and nature no longer obeys you in that death-spreading region; the sky is a sky of iron, and the air has iron clamps, and the ice-rocks wedge in the ship. Hark how it cracks and groans. Ice will imbed it as amber imbeds a straw. And a man has gone forth, living yet, from the ship and its dead; and he has clambered up the spikes of an iceberg, and the two moons gaze down on his form. That man is yourself; and terror is on you - terror; and terror has swallowed your will. And I see swarming up the steep ice-rock, grey grisly things. The bears of the north have scented their quarry - they come near you and nearer, shambling and rolling their bulk, and in that day every moment shall seem to you longer than the centuries through which you have passed. And heed this - after life, moments continued make the bliss or the hell of eternity.'' Hush, ' said the whisper; 'but the day, you assure me, is far off - very far! I go back to the almond and rose of Damascus! - sleep! ' ("The House And The Brain . Edward BulwerLytton
6
You will remember that Albertus Magnus, after describing minutely the process by which spirits may be invoked and commanded, adds emphatically that the process will instruct and avail only to the few - that a man must be born a magician! - that is, born with a peculiar physical temperament, as a man is born a poet. Rarely are men in whose constitution lurks this occult power of the highest order of intellect - usually in the intellect there is some twist, perversity, or disease.' ("The House And The Brain") . Edward BulwerLytton
7
And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from these globules themselves as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled with them; larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water - things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other - forms like nought ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. ("The House And The Brain") . Edward BulwerLytton
8
My theory is that the Supernatural is the Impossible, and what is called the supernatural is only something in the laws of nature of which we have been hitherto ignorant. Edward BulwerLytton
9
We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing. Edward BulwerLytton
10
Genius does what it must talent does what it can. Edward BulwerLytton
11
Laws die books never. Edward BulwerLytton
12
Master books but do not let them master you. Read to live not live to read. Edward BulwerLytton
13
There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths. Edward BulwerLytton
14
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm it moves stones it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it. Edward BulwerLytton
15
Strike from mankind the principle of faith and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep. Edward BulwerLytton
16
In life it is difficult to say who do you the most mischief enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best. Edward BulwerLytton
17
The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life discerns his object and toward that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Edward BulwerLytton
18
When a person is down in the world an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching. Edward BulwerLytton
19
The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells. Edward BulwerLytton
20
A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry is to a woman. Edward BulwerLytton
21
Take in the ideas of the day drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow time enough to consider it when it becomes today. Edward BulwerLytton
22
By degrees, the bitterness at my heart diffused itself to the circumference of the circle in which my life went its cheerless mechanical round. Edward BulwerLytton