Quotes by Lew Wallace

About Lew Wallace:

Lewis "Lew" Wallace is best known for his historical adventure story, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), a bestselling novel that has been called "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century."
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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 an...

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

Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman.

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

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 fo...

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

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

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; i...

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 a...

Lew Wallace

The enemy of man is man, my brother.

Lew Wallace

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

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

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

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 ...

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�...

Lew Wallace

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

Lew Wallace

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

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.

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

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

Lew Wallace

Author Bio

  • NameLew Wallace
  • DescriptionAmerican lawyer, Union general in the American Civil War, territorial governor and statesman, politician, and author of 'Ben Hur'
  • AliasesLewis "Lew" Wallace
  • BornApril 10, 1827
  • DiedFebruary 15, 1905
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionOfficer; Lawyer; Diplomat; Novelist; Politician; Autobiographer; Writer