"How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism"
About this Quote
The engine here is “some dazzling aphorism.” An aphorism is compact, portable, repeatable - a mental meme before the internet. Bulwer-Lytton implies that a well-turned sentence can recruit us into the habits of inference: “to think, to draw conclusions,” almost as if reasoning is a chain reaction triggered by a single flare. Subtext: our intellectual awakenings are frequently aesthetic. We like the snap of a maxim, the feeling of instant clarity, the moral extracted “from the follies of life” as if experience were raw material waiting to be refined into wisdom.
As a nineteenth-century politician-novelist, Bulwer-Lytton knew public life ran on verbal electricity. In an era of speeches, salons, and serialized prose, a “dazzling” line could travel farther than an argument, shaping what counted as common sense. The intent isn’t to sneer at aphorisms; it’s to diagnose their power. We don’t merely learn ideas - we learn the pleasure of sounding right, and that pleasure is often the real entry point to reason.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. (2026, January 18). How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/how-many-of-us-have-been-attracted-to-reason-16977/
Chicago Style
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. "How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/how-many-of-us-have-been-attracted-to-reason-16977/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/how-many-of-us-have-been-attracted-to-reason-16977/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.







