Lord Byron Quotes

I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other.

The cold, the changed, perchance the dead, anew, The mourn'd, the loved, the lost,-too many, yet how few!

Champagne with its foaming whirls/As white as Cleopatra's pearls.

Out of chaos God made a world, and out of high passions comes a people.

Who knows whether, when a comet shall approach this globe to destroy it, as it often has been and will be destroyed, men will not tear rocks from their foundations by means of steam, and hurl mountains, as the giants are said to have done, against the flaming mass? - and then we shall have traditions of Titans again, and of wars with Heaven...

I have always believed that all things depended upon Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves.

Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived by them.

Her great merit is finding out mine - there is nothing so amiable as discernment.

What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements.

A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.

Grief is fantastical, and loves the dead, And the apparel of the grave.

Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom,
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;
But on thy turf shall roses rear
Their leaves, the earliest of the year.

I feel my immortality over sweep all pains, all tears, all time, all fears, - and peal, like the eternal thunders of the deep, into my ears, this truth, - thou livest forever!

Better to sink beneath the shock Than moulder piecemeal on the rock!

It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment - but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?

Just as old age is creeping on space, And clouds come o'er the sunset of our day, They kindly leave us, though not quite alone, But in good company
the gout or stone.

A quiet conscience makes one so serene.

Poetry should only occupy the idle.

Shakespeare's name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.

So bright the tear in Beauty's eye, Love half regrets to kiss it dry.

Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, and what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, and what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way; - all this comes of Authorship.

The sky is changed,-and such a change! O night And storm and darkness! ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder.

Where all have gone, and all must go
To be the nothing that I was
'Ere born to life and living woe!

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.

A man must serve his time to every trade,
Save censure-critics all are ready made.
Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote
With just enough learning to misquote ...

As to Don Juan, confess that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?

My altars are the mountains and the ocean.

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls
the World.

Well, well, the world must turn upon its axis, And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails, And live and die, make love and pay our taxes, And as the veering winds shift, shift our sails.

It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a grand peut-tre -but still it is a grand one. Everybody clings to it -the stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of human bipeds is still persuaded that he is immortal.

None are so desolate but something dear, Dearer than self, possesses or possess'd A thought, and claims the homage of a tear.

In commitment, we dash the hopes of a thousand potential selves.

The premises are so delightfully extensive, that two people might live together without ever seeing, hearing or meeting.

It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

Know ye not who would be free themselves must strike the blow? by their right arms the conquest must be wrought?

'Twas strange that one so young should thus concern His brain about the action of the sky; If you think 'twas philosophy that this did, I can't help thinking puberty assisted.

Now I shall go to sleep. Goodnight.

What is Death, so it be but glorious? 'Tis a sunset; And mortals may be happy to resemble The Gods but in decay.

One hates an author that's all author.

History - the devil's scripture

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand.

Hearts will break - yet brokenly, live on.

What a strange thing is man! And what a stranger is woman.

The devil hath not, in all his quiver's choice, An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.

I depart, Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.

I have imbibed such a love for money that I keep some sequins in a drawer to count, and cry over them once a week.

I awoke one morning and found myself famous.

Yet smelt roast meat, beheld a huge fire shine, And cooks in motion with their clean arms bared.

A feast not profuse but elegant; more of salt [refinement] than of expense.

To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss revealed
A marvel and a secret.
- Be it so.

Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose, And shook within their pyramids to hear A new Cambyses thundering in their ear; While the dark shades of forty ages stood Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood.

The French courage proceeds from vanity

The causes that have made me wretched would probably not have discomposed, or, at least, more than discomposed, another. We are all differently organized; and that I feel acutely is no more my fault (though it is my misfortune) than that another feels not, is his. We did not make ourselves, and if the elements of unhappiness abound more in the nature of one man than another, he is but the more entitled to our pity and our forbearance.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast.

Had sigh'd to many, though he loved but one.

Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.

War, war is still the cry,-"war even to the knife!"

A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins.

No ear can hear nor tongue can tell the tortures of the inward hell!

You are 'the best of cut-throats:'--do not start;
The phrase is Shakespeare's, and not misapplied:--
War's a brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art,
Unless her cause by Right be sanctified.
If you have acted once a generous part,
The World, not the World's masters, will decide,
And I shall be delighted to learn who,
Save you and yours, have gained by Waterloo?

I am no flatterer--you've supped full of flattery:
They say you like it too--'tis no great wonder:
He whose whole life has been assault and battery,
At last may get a little tired of thunder;
And swallowing eulogy much more than satire, he
May like being praised for every lucky blunder;
Called 'Saviour of the Nations'--not yet saved,
And Europe's Liberator--still enslaved.

I've done. Now go and dine from off the plate
Presented by the Prince of the Brazils,
And send the sentinel before your gate
A slice or two from your luxurious meals:
He fought, but has not fed so well of late...

That prose is a verse, and verse is a prose; convincing all, by demonstrating plain – poetic souls delight in prose insane

[My advice] will one day be found
With other relics of 'a former world,'
When this world shall be former, underground,
Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisped, and curled,
Baked, fried or burnt, turned inside-out, or drowned,
Like all the worlds before, which have been hurled
First out of, and then back again to Chaos,
The Superstratum which will overlay us.

Constancy ... that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal.

So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.

There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in, Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.

I see before me the gladiator lie.

All farewells should be sudden, when forever.

A bargain is in its very essence a hostile transaction do not all men try to abate the price of all they buy? I contend that a bargain even between brethren is a declaration of war.

Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling.

Who then will explain the explanation?

Such hath it been
shall be
beneath the sun The many still must labour for the one.

It is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution, - there is something sensible to grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.

Retirement accords with the tone of my mind; I will not descend to a world I despise.

And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee.

And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; They have a weight upon our waking thoughts, They take a weight from off our waking toils, They do divide our being.

Fill high the cup with Samian wine!

Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers.

The music, and the banquet, and the wine
The garlands, the rose odors, and the flowers, The sparkling eyes, and flashing ornaments
The white arms and the raven hair
the braids, And bracelets; swan-like bosoms, and the necklace, An India in itself, yet dazzling not.

The world is a bundle of hay, Mankind are the asses that pull, Each tugs in a different way And the greatest of all is John Bull!

The simple Wordsworth ... / Who, both by precept and example, shows / That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose.

And angling too, that solitary vice, What Izaak Walton sings or says: The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it.

There are some feelings time cannot benumb, Nor torture shake.

Yet still there whispers the small voice within, Heard through Gain's silence, and o'er Glory's din; Whatever creed be taught or land be trod, Man's conscience is the oracle of God.

Prolonged endurance tames the bold.

No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are passed.

But I had not quite fixed whether to make him [Don Juan] end in Hell-or in an unhappy marriage,-not knowing which would be the severest.

Reason is so unreasonable, that few people can say they are in possession of it.

Liberty - eternal spirit of the chainless mind

A pretty woman is a welcome guest.

For all we know that English people are/ Fed upon beef - I won't say much of beer/ Because 'tis liquor only, and being far/ From this my subject, has no business here;/ We know too, they are very fond of war,/ A pleasure - like all pleasures - rather dear;/ So were the Cretans - from which I infer/ That beef and battle both were owing her

Whatsoever thy birth, thou were a beautiful thought and softly bodied forth.

Never to talk to ones self is a form of hypocrisy

Of religion I know nothing
at least, in its favor.

As falls the dew on quenchless sands, blood only serves to wash ambition's hands.

The drying up a single tear has more, of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.

Good but rarely came from good advice.

Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days - whatever there may be for the dust - the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence.

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heart
The heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd
To fetters and damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom.

Truth is a gem that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of the world all things are weighed by the false scale of custom.