Time & Perspective Quote by Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Bulwer-Lytton pitches mental hygiene as a civic duty, and he does it with the brisk confidence of a Victorian reformer who believes society can be improved by better habits. The line’s surface promise is almost bodily: keep your thoughts current and you keep yourself current. But the real persuasion is in the domestic metaphor of maintenance - “take in,” “drain off” - as if the mind were a sink that clogs when left to yesterday’s sediment. It’s advice that flatters the reader into picturing themselves as modern: alert, responsive, unburdened by stale dogma.

As a politician in an age of accelerating change - railways, mass newspapers, an expanding public sphere - Bulwer-Lytton is implicitly arguing for adaptability as a form of strength. “Ideas of the day” isn’t just self-help; it’s an endorsement of staying attuned to the present consensus, the circulating debates, the live wires of public opinion. There’s a pragmatic, parliamentary subtext: yesterday’s arguments may have won the last vote, but they won’t necessarily survive the next session.

The twist is his treatment of the future. “Time enough to consider it when it becomes today” reads like calm stoicism, but it also licenses a particular kind of governance: postpone tomorrow until it forces itself onto the agenda. That’s either an antidote to anxious speculation or a neat justification for incrementalism. The wit is in how he makes the refusal to over-plan sound like wisdom rather than avoidance, dressing political caution up as personal freshness.