Lord Byron Quotes

I've seen your stormy seas and stormy women, And pity lovers rather more than seamen. ~ Lord Byron

In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell. ~ Lord Byron

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! ~ Lord Byron

The Niobe of nations! there she stands. ~ Lord Byron

The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. ~ Lord Byron

The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes, and feel for what their duty bids them do. ~ Lord Byron

Let there be light!" said God, and there was light! "Let there be blood!" says man, and there's a sea! - Lord Byron, Don Juan ~ Robert Liparulo

The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatsoever, for my heart always alights upon the nearest perch. ~ Lord Byron

Not to admire, is all the art I know To make men happy, or to keep them so. Thus Horace wrote we all know long ago; And thus Pope quotes the precept to re-teach From his translation; but had none admired, Would Pope have sung, or Horace been inspired? ~ Lord Byron

How sweet and soothing is this hour of calm! I thank thee, night! for thou has chased away these horrid bodements which, amidst the throng, I could not dissipate; and with the blessing of thy benign and quiet influence now will I to my couch, although to rest is almost wronging such a night as this. ~ Lord Byron

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

A sort of hostile transaction, very necessary to keep the world going, but by no means a sinecure to the parties concerned. ~ Lord Byron

Opinions are made to be changed - or how is truth to be got at? ~ Lord Byron

I cannot describe to you the despairing sensation of trying to do something for a man who seems incapable or unwilling to do anything further for himself. ~ Lord Byron

My native land, good night! ~ Lord Byron

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

Liberty - eternal spirit of the chainless mind ~ Lord Byron

I have always laid it down as a maxim -and found it justified by experience -that a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist between two of the same sex -but then with the condition that they never have made or are to make love to each other. ~ Lord Byron

Who then will explain the explanation? ~ Lord Byron

Very Like a Whale

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can'ts seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have
to go out
of their way to say that it is like something else.
What foes it mean when we are told
That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot
of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus
hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming
in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf
on
the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there
are
a great many things,
But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple
and gold
cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually
like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and
big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?
Fra ~ Ogden Nash

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. ~ Lord Byron

Bologna is celebrated for producing popes, painters, and sausage. ~ Lord Byron

A quiet conscience makes one so serene. ~ Lord Byron

[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. ~ Lord Byron

A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping In sight, then lost amidst the forestry Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; A huge, dun cupola, like a fools-cap crown On a fool's head - and there is London Town. ~ Lord Byron

Turning oneself to the misfortunes of others is the best way to dispense with personal troubles. Hadn't Lord Byron himself said, "The busy have no time for tears"? ~ Martha Hall Kelly

When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted, To sever for years. ~ Lord Byron

We of the craft are all crazy. ~ Lord Byron

The heart ran o'er With silent worship of the great of old!
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns. ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Lord Byron

'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it. ~ Lord Byron

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? ~ Lord Byron

Romances paint at full length people's wooing. But only give a bust of marriages. ~ Lord Byron

Ah, happy years! once more who would not be a boy? ~ Lord Byron

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

So sweet the blush of bashfulness, E'en pity scarce can wish it less! ~ Lord Byron

The Coach does not play in the game, but the Coach helps the players identify areas to improve their game. ~ Lord Byron

Knowledge is not happiness, and science
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance. ~ Lord Byron

Eat, drink and love ... the rest is not worth a nickel ~ Lord Byron

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime! ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Lord Byron

This is to be along; this, this is solitude! ~ Lord Byron

It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe - you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep. ~ Lord Byron

Oh, Christ! it is a goodly sight to see What Heaven hath done for this delicious land! ~ Lord Byron

Never to talk to ones self is a form of hypocrisy ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Lord Byron

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

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

One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that of any other. ~ Lord Byron

The best prophet of the future is the past. ~ Lord Byron

And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear. ~ Lord Byron

Come what may, I have been blest. ~ Lord Byron

In solitude, when we are least alone. ~ Lord Byron

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

I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey
But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter. ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Lord Byron

My beautiful, my own
My only Venice-this is breath! Thy breeze
Thine Adrian sea-breeze, how it fans my face!
Thy very winds feel native to my veins,
And cool them into calmness! ~ Lord Byron

The basis of your religion is injustice. The Son of God the pure, the immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed for the guilty. This proves his heroism, but no more does away with man's sin than a school boy's volunteering to be flogged for another would exculpate a dunce from negligence. ~ Lord Byron

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

The Christian has greatly the advantage of the unbeliever, having everything to gain and nothing to lose. ~ Lord Byron

I have had, and may have still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in life, who are like one's partners in the waltz of this world -not much remembered when the ball is over. ~ Lord Byron

But as to women, who can penetrate the real sufferings of their she condition? Man's very sympathy with their estate has much of selfishness and more suspicion. Their love, their virtue, beauty, education, but form good housekeepers, to breed a nation. ~ Lord Byron

I am always most religious upon a sunshiny day ... ~ Lord Byron

When Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter." And proved it
't was no matter what he said. ~ Lord Byron

I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, ... that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad for a term among the few allies our wars have left us. ~ Lord Byron

I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail. ~ Lord Byron

Father of Light! great God of Heaven! Hear'st thou the accents of despair? Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven? Can vice atone for crimes by prayer. ~ Lord Byron

Romantic poetry had its heyday when people like Lord Byron were kicking it large. But you try and make a living as a poet today, and you'll find it's very different! ~ Alan Moore

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

Though the day of my Destiny 's over, And the star of my Fate hath declined, Thy soft heart refused to discover The faults which so many could find. ~ Lord Byron

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 ~ Lord Byron

Yet truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse herself inspires: This fact, in virtue's name, let Crabbe attest,- Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best. ~ Lord Byron

A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded. ~ Lord Byron

May Moorland weavers boast Pindaric skill, And tailors' lays be longer than their bill! While punctual beaux reward the grateful notes, And pay for poems
when they pay for coats. ~ Lord Byron

He scratched his ear, the infallible resource to which embarrassed people have recourse. ~ Lord Byron

We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one can understand, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for inspiration and style themselves Evangelicals? ~ Lord Byron

I'd love to own Newstead, partly because it belonged to Lord Byron, but also to try to uncover what dark secrets really lie beneath. ~ Karen Maitland

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou? Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead? Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low Some less majestic, less beloved head? ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Lord Byron

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame. ~ Lord Byron

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

And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee. ~ Lord Byron

My time has been passed viciously and agreeably - at thirty-one so few years months days hours or minutes remain that 'Carpe diem' is not enough - I have been obliged to crop even the seconds - for who can trust to tomorrow? ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Lord Byron

I die but first I have possessed, And come what may, I have been blessed. ~ Lord Byron

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

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. ~ Lord Byron

'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. ~ Lord Byron

The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts,
Is its own origin of ill and end,
And its own place and time; its innate sense,
When stripped of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without,
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert. ~ Lord Byron

It is very iniquitous to make me pay my debts, you have no idea of the pain it gives one. ~ Lord Byron

Damn description, it is always disgusting. ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Lord Byron

Such is your cold coquette, who can't say "No," And won't say "Yes," and keeps you on and off-ing On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow, Then sees your heart wreck'd, with an inward scoffing. ~ Lord Byron

Sublime tobacco! which from east to west, Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest; Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides His hours, and rivals opium and his brides; Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand, Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand: Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe, When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe; Like other charmers wooing the caress, More dazzlingly when daring in full dress; Yet thy true lovers more admire by far Thy naked beauties Give me a cigar! ~ Lord Byron

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife, He would have written sonnets all his life?. ~ Lord Byron

My Dearest Theresa,

I have read this book in your garden, my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them, which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book that was yours, he could only think of love.
In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours, Amor mio, is comprised my existence here and thereafter. I feel I exist here, and I feel that I shall exist hereafter – to what purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, eighteen years of age, and two out of a convent, I wish you had stayed there, with all my heart, or at least, that I had never met you in your married state.
But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me, at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us, but they never will, unless you wish it. ~ Lord Byron

He who grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, So that no wonder waits him. ~ Lord Byron

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. ~ Lord Byron

Let joy be unconfined ... ~ Lord Byron