110 quotes
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 Last Days of Pompeii (1834)
All books grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and Landmarks.
Pity in woman is a great beautifier.
Whatever the number of a man's friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few; but if he has only one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many.
What Will He Do With It? (1858)
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.
Lucretia (1846)
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.
The Caxtons (1849)
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!"
The Lady of Lyons (1838)
He never errs who sacrifices self.
The New Timon (1846)
Love has no thought of self!
Love buys not with the ruthless usurer's gold
The loathsome prostitution of a hand
Without a heart! Love sacrifices all things
To bless the thing it loves!
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.
Dear Land to which Desire forever flees;
Time doth no present to our grasp allow,
Say in the fixed Eternal shall we seize
At last the fleeting Now?
Love hath no need of words.
Richelieu (1839)
Woman in this scale, the weed in that, Jupiter, hang out thy balance, and weigh them both; and if thou give the preference to woman, all I can say is, the next time Juno ruffles thee—O Jupiter, try the weed.
What Will He Do With It? (1858)
Genius is bound to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well — has, with its large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human, that, where others may scorn, genius should only pity.
What Will He Do with It? (1867)
"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!
The Last of the Barons (1843)
Rank is a great beautifier.
The Lady of Lyons (1838)
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.
Zanoni (1842)
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.
Lucretia (1846)
... if the breast be uneducated, the gift may curse the giver; and he who passes at once from the slave to the freeman may pass as rapidly from the freeman to the ruffian.
Rienzi: The Last of the Tribunes (1835)
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.
Lucretia (1846)