Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart, When it thrills as it fills every animate part, Where lurks it? How works it?.. we scarcely detect it.

Rest is sweet after strife.

We are what we must, And not what we would be. I know that one hour Forestalls not another. The will and the power Are diverse.

'Twas a hand White, delicate, dimpled, warm, languid, and bland. The hand of a woman is often, in youth, Somewhat rough, somewhat red, somewhat graceless in truth; Does its beauty refine, as its pulses grow calm, Or as sorrow has cross'd …

We gain Justice, judgment, with years, or else years are in vain.

The world is a nettle; disturb it, it stings. Grasp it firmly, it stings not.

Whene'er I hear French spoken as I approve, I feel myself quietly falling in love.

Let any man show the world that he feels Afraid of its bark and ’t will fly at his heels: Let him fearlessly face it, ’t will leave him alone: But ’t will fawn at his feet if he flings it a bone.

The man who seeks one thing in life and but one May hope to achieve it before life is done; But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows A harvest of barren regrets.

Words, however, are things: and the man who accords To his language the license to outrage his soul Is controll'd by the words he disdains to control.

The ages roll Forward; and, forward with them, draw my soul Into Time’s infinite sea. And to be glad or sad I care no more: But to have done, and to have been, before I cease to do and be!

A night of tears! for the gusty rain Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet; And the moon look'd forth, as tho' in pain, With her face al white and wet.

In the lives of most women and men There's a moment when all would go smooth and even, If only the dead could find out when To come back and be forgiven.

The world is fill'd with folly and sin, And Love must cling where it can, I say: For Beauty is easy enough to win; But one isn't loved every day.

And the jasmin-flower in her fair young breast: (O the faint, sweet smell of that jasmin-flower!) And the one bird singing alone in his nest: And the one star over the tower.

Ah, well! when time is flown, how it fled It is better neither to ask nor tell. Leave the dead moments to bury their dead.

Oh, moment of sweet peril, perilous sweet! When woman joins herself to man.

The unknown Is life to love, religion, poetry.

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

There is a pleasure which is born of pain.

For only by knowledge of that which is not Thyself shall thyself be learn'd.

Art is Nature made by Man To Man the interpreter of God.

The thing which must be, must be for the best.

Since we parted, yester eve, I do love thee, love, believe, Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer, One dream deeper, one night stronger, One sun surer,—thus much more Than I loved thee, love, before.