Top 100 George Gordon Byron Quotes
#2. Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.
George Gordon Byron
#3. Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality, And dreams in their development have breath, And tears and tortures, and the touch of joy.
George Gordon Byron
#4. The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
George Gordon Byron
#6. Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy.
George Gordon Byron
#7. I see before me the Gladiator lie: / He leans upon his hand - his manly brow / Consents to death, but conquers agony.
George Gordon Byron
#9. It is not in the storm or in the strife
We feel benumbed and wish to be nor more,
But in the after-silence on the shore
When all is lost except a little life.
George Gordon Byron
#10. Let him! He is great but in his greatness he is no happier than we in our conflict! Goodness would not make evil; and what else hath he made? but let him sit on his vast solitary throne, creating worlds to make eternity less burthensome to his immense existence.
George Gordon Byron
#13. Revenge is as the tigers spring,
Deadly, and quick, and crushing; yet, as real
Torture is theirs, what they inflict they feel.
George Gordon Byron
#17. Ah me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen, To follow half on which the eye dilates Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken Than those whereof such things the bard relates, Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates?
George Gordon Byron
#19. All human history attests
That happiness for man, - the hungry sinner! -
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.
~Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIII, stanza 99
George Gordon Byron
#21. And those who saw, it did surprise,
Such drops could fall from human eyes.
George Gordon Byron
#23. Oh could I feel as I have felt,-or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanish'd scene;
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
George Gordon Byron
#24. A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover
but will sooner or later find a tyrant.
George Gordon Byron
#25. I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.
George Gordon Byron
#27. Oh! Many a time and oft had Harold loved, or dream'd he'd loved since Rapture is a dream.
George Gordon Byron
#30. Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone.
George Gordon Byron
#31. There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears;
The earth is but the music of the spheres.
George Gordon Byron
#32. Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of this land,
And trace it in this poem every line:
I don't pretend that I quite understand
My meaning when I would be very fine;
But the fact is that I have nothing planned ...
George Gordon Byron
#33. If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.
George Gordon Byron
#34. Oh pleasure, you're indeed a pleasant thing, / Although one must be damned for you no doubt. / I make a resolution every spring / Of reformation, ere the year run out.
George Gordon Byron
#36. But pomp and power alone are woman's care,
And where these are light Eros finds a feere;
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.
George Gordon Byron
#37. Society is now one polish'd horde, Form'd of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.
George Gordon Byron
#39. There' s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay.
George Gordon Byron
#40. There are two Souls, whose equal flow
In gentle stream so calmly run,
That when they part - they part? - ah no!
They cannot part - those Souls are One.
George Gordon Byron
#41. Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o'er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever thou hast been, 'Tis something better not to be. [First published, Childe Harold, 1812
George Gordon Byron
#44. And there the stories
Of martyrs awed, as Spagnoletto tainted
His brush with all the blood of all the sainted.
George Gordon Byron
#46. It is not with earth, though I must till it, I feel at war..but I may not profit of what it bears of beauty,untoiling, Nor gratify my thousands swelling thoughts with knowledge, Nor allay my thousand fears of death and life.
George Gordon Byron
#47. So we'll go no more a-roving so late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, and the moon be still as bright.
George Gordon Byron
#49. Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
George Gordon Byron
#50. To be perfectly original one should think much and read little, and this is impossible, for one must have read before one has learnt to think.
George Gordon Byron
#51. The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. - Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,
I learn'd the language of another world.
George Gordon Byron
#54. Wedded she some years, and to a man
Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;
And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE
'Twere better to have TWO of five and twenty ...
George Gordon Byron
#55. And he who lieth there was childless. I have dried the fountain of gentle race..
-Cain
George Gordon Byron
#56. My slumbers
if I slumber
are not sleep,
But a continuance of enduring thought,
Which then I can resist not: in my heart
There is a vigil, and these eyes but close
To look within; and yet I live, and bear
The aspect and the form of breathing men.
George Gordon Byron
#57. We are all the fools of time and terror: Days
Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.
George Gordon Byron
#58. Above or Love, Hope, Hate or Fear,
It lives all passionless and pure:
An age shall fleet like earthly year;
Its years in moments shall endure.
Away, away, without a wing,
O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly;
A nameless and eternal thing,
Forgetting what it was to die.
George Gordon Byron
#59. I have stood upon Achilles' tomb
and heard Troy doubted,
Time will doubt of Rome
George Gordon Byron
#60. The great object of life is sensation- to feel that we exist, even though in pain.
George Gordon Byron
#61. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more
George Gordon Byron
#62. Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.
George Gordon Byron
#63. Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!
What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?
George Gordon Byron
#64. Shadow! or Spirit!
Whatever thou art,
Which still doth inherit
The whole or a part
Of the form of thy birth,
Of the mould of thy clay,
Which returned to the earth,
Re-appear to the day!
George Gordon Byron
#65. You gave me the key to your heart, my love, then why did you make me knock?
George Gordon Byron
#68. Gwynned lies two days westwards; still further south, the weregeld calls. Mayhap with All-Father Woden's favour, my deeds may yet inspire the skalds.
George Gordon Byron
#73. Ah, monarchs! could ye taste the mirth ye mar, Not in the toils of Glory would ye fret; The hoarse dull drum would sleep, and Man be happy yet.
George Gordon Byron
#75. Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, the Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
George Gordon Byron
#76. Every feeling hath been shaken;
Pride, which not a world could bow,
Bows to thee - by thee forsaken,
Even my soul forsakes me now.
George Gordon Byron
#77. Are not the mountains, waves, and skies as much a part of me, as I of them?
George Gordon Byron
#78. Evil and Good are things in their own essebce and not made good or evil by the giver. but if he gives you good so cal him; if evil springs from him, do not name it mine till ye know better its true fount
-Lucifer
George Gordon Byron
#80. Years steal fire from the mind as vigor from the limb; and life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
George Gordon Byron
#81. Too oft is a smile
But the hypocrite's wile,
To mask detestation or fear;
Give me a soft sigh,
Whilst the soultelling eye
Is dimm'd, for a time, with a Tear
George Gordon Byron
#82. I doubt sometimes whether a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me - yet I sometimes long for it.
George Gordon Byron
#83. I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.
George Gordon Byron
#85. But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.
George Gordon Byron
#86. My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me.
George Gordon Byron
#87. I will not ask where thou liest low, Nor gaze upon the spot;
There flowers or weeds at will may
grow, So I behold them not
George Gordon Byron
#88. She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes ...
George Gordon Byron
#89. No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don't I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.
George Gordon Byron
#90. Censure no more shall brand my humble name
The child of passion and the fool of fame
George Gordon Byron
#91. The humblest individual under heaven, Than might suffice a moderate century through. I knew that nought was lasting, but now even Change grows too changeable without being new.
George Gordon Byron
#93. Loathed he in his native land to dwell, Which seemed to him more lone than eremite's sad cell.
George Gordon Byron
#94. Even innocence itself has many a wile,
And will not dare to trust itself with truth,
And love is taught hypocrisy from youth.
George Gordon Byron
#95. Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
George Gordon Byron
#97. They grieved for those who perished with the cutter, and also for the biscuit casks and butter.
George Gordon Byron
#98. I do not believe in any religion, I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this life without speculating upon another.
George Gordon Byron
#99. I came to realize clearly that the mind is no other than the Mountain and the Rivers and the great wide Earth, the Sun and the Moon and the Sky.
George Gordon Byron
#100. And from his native land resolved to go, And visit scorching climes beyond the sea; With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe, And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below.
George Gordon Byron
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