Skip to content

Who can undo
What time hath done? who can win back the wind?
Beckon lost music from a broken lute?
Renew the redness of a last year's rose?
Or dig the sunken sunset from the deep?

— Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Orval, or The Fool of Time, Second Epoch, in Orval, or The Fool of Time and Other Imitations and Paraphrases (London: Chapman & Hall, 1869), p. 39.
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

In life there are meetings which seem
Like a fate.

Lucile (1860)

Who knows nothing base
Fears nothing known.

Chronicles and Characters (1868)

As pure as a pearl,
And as perfect: a noble and innocent girl.

Lucile (1860)

Who seeks for aid
Must show how service sought can be repaid.

Chronicles and Characters (1868)

There is purpose in pain,
Otherwise it were devilish.

Lucile (1860)

Do not think that years leave us and find us the same!

Lucile (1860)

Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem.

The Wanderer (1859)

Only by knowledge of that which is not thyself, shall thyself be learned.

All Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton quotes →

More quotes by Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.

Chronicles and Characters (1868)

There is a pleasure which is born of pain.

The Wanderer (1859)

Those true eyes
Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise
The sweet soul shining through them.

Lucile (1860)

O be very sure
That no man will learn anything at all,
Unless he first will learn humility.

Chronicles and Characters (1868)

That man is great, and he alone,
Who serves a greatness not his own.

Chronicles and Characters (1868)

All Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.