“Books are waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Ernest Maltravers (1837), Book I, Ch. 15

About Edward Bulwer-Lytton

1803 – 1873

English novelist and politician, author of "The Last Days of Pompeii".

“All doubt is cowardice—all trust is brave.”

“Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.”

“Master books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.”

“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”

“There is the love of knowing without the love of learning; the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind.”

“Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We can not learn men from books.”

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”

“A Nobel Peace Prize would help me to begin this campaign for girls' education.”

“Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind.”