Quote#Self
It is an inevitable law that a man, in spite of himself, should live…
Quote byEdward Bulwer-Lytton · 1803–1873
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Caxtons (1849), Part VI, Chapter I.
English (original)
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.
— Edward Bulwer-Lytton
More from Edward Bulwer-Lytton
A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
The easiest person to deceive is one’s own self.
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.
There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.
... 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.
It is not Wisdom, but Ignorance, which teaches men presumption; Genius may be sometimes arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as Knowledge.