Lew Wallace Quotes & Sayings

If thou dost think of me again, O tribune, let it not be lost in thy mind that I prayed thee only for word of my people - mother, sister. — Lew Wallace

As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly. — Lew Wallace

I will be the stronger of the knowledge. In warning there is strength. — Lew Wallace

They to whom a boy comes asking, Who am I, and what am I to be? have need of ever so much care. Each word in answer may prove to the after-life what each finger-touch of the artist is to the clay he is modelling. — Lew Wallace

My ancestors further back than the first Roman were Hebrews." "The stubborn pride of thy race is not lost in thee," said Arrius, observing a flush upon the rower's face. "Pride is never so loud as when in chains." "What cause hast thou for pride?" "That I am a Jew." Arrius smiled. — Lew Wallace

Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others. — Lew Wallace

Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams. — Lew Wallace

A man thirty years old, I said to myself, should have his field of life all ploughed, and his planting well done; for after that it is summer time. — Lew Wallace

Religion is merely the law which binds man to his Creator: in purity it has but these elements
God, the Soul, and their Mutual Recognition; out of which, when put in practise, spring Worship, Love, and Reward. — Lew Wallace

For to-day I take or give;
For to-day I drink and live;
For to-day I beg or borrow;
Who knows about the silent morrow? — Lew Wallace

Sympathy is in great degree a result of the mood we are in at the moment; anger forbids the emotion. On the other hand, it is easiest taken on when we are in a state of most absolute self-satisfaction. — Lew Wallace

Such were the shepherds of Judea! In appearance, rough and savage as the gaunt dogs with them around the blaze; in fact, simple-minded, tender-hearted; effects in due, in part, to the primitive life they led, but chiefly to their constant care of things lovable and helpless. — Lew Wallace

It is neither wise nor honest to detract from beauty as a quality. There cannot be a refined soul insensible to its influence. — Lew Wallace

Repentance must be something more than mere remorse for sins: it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven. — Lew Wallace

Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away,but love stays with us. Love is God. — Lew Wallace

I know what I should love to do - to build a study; to write, and to think of nothing else. I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made, and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it. Not a bookworm, being which is to give off no utterances; but a man in the world of writing - one with a pen that shall stop men to listen to it, whether they wish to or not. — Lew Wallace

Difference in their ages. The elder was bareheaded. A loose tunic, dropping to the knees, was his attire complete, except sandals and a light-blue mantle spread under him on the seat. The costume left his arms and legs exposed, and they were brown as the face; nevertheless, a certain grace of manner, refinement of features, and culture of voice decided his rank. The tunic, of softest woollen, gray-tinted, at the neck, sleeves, and edge of the skirt bordered with red, and bound to the waist by a — Lew Wallace

It is more beautiful to trust in God. The beautiful in this world is all from his hand, declaring the perfection of taste; he is the author of all form; he clothes the lily, he colours the rose, he distils the dewdrop, he makes the music of nature; in a word, he organized us for this life, and imposed its conditions; and they are such guaranty to me that, trustful as a little child, I leave to him the organization of my Soul, and every arrangement for the life after death. I know he loves me. — Lew Wallace

One is never more on trial than in the moment of excessive good fortune. — Lew Wallace

When people are lonely they stoop to any companionship. — Lew Wallace

Only those who have been wanderers long desolate can know the power there was in the latter appeal [Christianity]. — Lew Wallace

Past question, every experience is serviceable to us. Where got Ben-Hur the large hand and mighty grip which helped him now so well? Where but from the oar with which so long he fought the seas? And what was this spring of the floor under his feet to the dizzy lurch with which in the old time the trembling ship yielded to the beat of staggering billows, drunk with their power? So he kept his place, and gave the four free rein, and called to them in soothing voice, trying merely to guide them round the dangerous turn; and before the fever of the people began to abate, he had back the mastery. — Lew Wallace

It was then I saw thy mother, and loved her, and took her away in my secret heart. — Lew Wallace

The most perfect life develops as a circle, and terminates in its beginning, making it impossible to say, This is the commencement, that the end. — Lew Wallace

He was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped from the wells of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation of a hope
dream, if you will
in which the choicest happinesses were thought to be certainly in reach. In such case nothing intermediate will carry off the passion
the quarrel is with Fate. — Lew Wallace

From the depths of the well I had discovered a light above, and yearned to go up and see what all it shone upon. At last
ah, with what years of toil!
I stood in the perfect day, and beheld the principle of life, the element of religion, the link between the soul and God
Love! — Lew Wallace

Would you hurt a man keenest, strike at his self-love; would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections. — Lew Wallace

Beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder. — Lew Wallace

Perfection is God; simplicity is perfection. The curse of curses is that men will not let truths like these alone. — Lew Wallace

The architect had not stopped to bother about columns and porticos, proportions or interiors, or any limitation upon the epic he sought to materialize; he had simply made a servant of Nature - art can go no further. — Lew Wallace

They took him last night, and tried him," the man continued. "At dawn they led him before Pilate. Twice the Roman denied his guilt; twice he refused to give him over. At last he washed his hands, and said, 'Be it upon you then;' and they answered
" "Who answered?" "They
the priests and people
'His blood be upon us and our children.'" "Holy father Abraham!" cried Ben-Hur; "a Roman kinder to an Israelite than his own kin! And if
ah, if he should indeed be the son of God, what shall ever wash his blood from their children? It must not be
'tis time to fight! — Lew Wallace

The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history. — Lew Wallace

Revolution he contemplated, of course; but the processes of revolution have always been the same, and to lead men into them there have always been required, first, a cause or presence to enlist adherents; second, an end, or something as a practical achievement. As a rule he fights well who has wrongs to redress; but vastly better fights he who, with wrongs as a spur, has also steadily before him a glorious result in prospect
a result in which he can discern balm for wounds, compensation for valor, remembrance and gratitude in the event of death. — Lew Wallace

The enemy of man is man, my brother. — Lew Wallace

The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others. — Lew Wallace

Father of all
God!
what we have here is of thee; take our thanks and bless us, that we may continue to do thy will. — Lew Wallace

Believing in God, invisible yet supreme, I also believed it possible so to yearn for him with all my soul that he would take compassion and give me answer. — Lew Wallace

Latin is an abomination! — Lew Wallace

For know you, child, I have that faculty which is better than any one sense, better than a perfect body, better than courage and will, better than experience, ordinarily the best product of the longest lives - the faculty divinest of men, but which" - he stopped, and laughed again, not bitterly, but with real zest - "but which even the great do not sufficiently account, while with the herd it is a non-existent - the faculty of drawing men to my purpose and holding them faithfully to its achievement, by which, as against things to be done, I multiply myself into hundreds and thousands. — Lew Wallace

BEN-HUR." Esther returned the letter to her father, while a choking sensation gathered in her throat. There was not a word in the missive for her
not even in the salutation had she a share
and it would have been so easy to have written "and to thine, peace." For the first time — Lew Wallace

The impression made upon them by the first view of a camel equipped and loaded for the desert. Custom, so fatal to other novelties, affects this feeling but little. At the end of long journeys with caravans, after years of residence with the Bedawin, the Western-born, wherever they may be, will stop and wait the passing of the stately brute. The charm is not in the figure, which not even love can make beautiful; nor in the movement, the noiseless stepping, or the broad careen. As is the kindness of the sea to a ship, so that of the desert to its creature. It clothes him with all its mysteries; — Lew Wallace

In every four there is one the slowest, and one the swiftest; and while the race is always to the slowest, the trouble is always with the swiftest. — Lew Wallace

Thy heart is good, Esther, good as thy mother's was; and I pray
it have not the fate of most good hearts
to be trampled upon
by the unmerciful and blind. — Lew Wallace

In a verse of the Shema they found all the learning and all the law of their simple lives
that their Lord was One God, and that they must love him with all their souls. And they loved him, and such was their wisdom, surpassing that of kings. — Lew Wallace

They are like men: if bold, the better of scolding; if timid, the better of praise and flattery. — Lew Wallace

Pure wisdom always directs itself towards God; the purest wisdom is knowledge of God. — Lew Wallace

Hope deals with the future; now and the past are but servants that wait on her with impulse and suggestive circumstance. — Lew Wallace

To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty
to the poor and humble. — Lew Wallace

I would have had to kill him, and Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman. — Lew Wallace

I see, I see! From association Messala, in boyhood, was almost a Jew; had he remained here, he might have become a proselyte, so much do we all borrow from the influences that ripen our lives; but the years in Rome have been too much for him. I do not wonder at the change; yet"
her voice fell
"he might have dealt tenderly at least with you. It is a hard, cruel nature which in youth can forget its first loves. — Lew Wallace

The race was on; the souls of the racers were in it; over them bent the myriads. — Lew Wallace

In warning there is strength. — Lew Wallace

We of the sea come to know each other quickly; our loves, like our hates, are born of sudden dangers. — Lew Wallace

Everyone has known this condition of mind, though perhaps not all in the same degree; everyone will recognise it as the condition in which he has done brave things with apparent serenity; and everyone reading will say, Fortunate for Ben Hur if the folly which now catches him is but a friendly harlequin with whistle and pointed cap, and not some Violence with a pointed sword pitiless. — Lew Wallace

While craving justice for ourselves, it is never wise to be unjust to others. — Lew Wallace

Pride is never so loud as when in chains. — Lew Wallace

This soldiering thing sadly deadens that very good thing, humanity. — Lew Wallace

For I thought there was a relation between God and the soul as yet unknown. On this theme the mind can reason to a point, a dead, impassable wall; arrived there, all that remains is to stand and cry aloud for help. — Lew Wallace

The smallest bird cannot light upon the greatest tree without sending a shock to its most distant fiber. — Lew Wallace

What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart. — Lew Wallace

For power, you know, is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight. — Lew Wallace

It is never wise to slip the bands of discipline. — Lew Wallace

To every bench, as a fixture, there was a chain with heavy anklets. These the hortator proceeded to lock upon the oarsmen, going from number to number, leaving no choice but to obey, and, in event of disaster, no possibility of escape. — Lew Wallace

The wife of Ben-Hur, sat in her room in the beautiful villa by Misenum. It was noon, with a warm Italian sun making summer for the roses and vines outside. Everything in the apartment was Roman, — Lew Wallace

There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations; hence the vanity of the claim, and the idleness of disputes about it. A people risen, run their race, and die either of themselves or in the hands of another, who, succeeding to their power, take possession of their place, and upon their monuments write new names; such is history. — Lew Wallace