A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON We have progressively improved into a less spiritual species of tenderness -- but the seal is not ye...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover -- but will sooner or later find a tyran...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman, some strange influence, even if ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON But as to women, who can penetrate the real sufferings of their she condition? Man's very sympathy w...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I think the worst woman that ever existed would have made a man of very passable reputation -- they ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year imp...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Constancy... that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit c...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatso...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON All tragedies are finished by a death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage;
The future states...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I have imbibed such a love for money that I keep some sequins in a drawer to count, and cry over the...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Ready money is Aladdin's lamp.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Yes! Ready money is Aladdin's lamp.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Alas! how deeply painful is all payment!
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes -- and as cold as Charity, Chastity or any o...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON From the wreck of the past, which hath perish
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is s...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other pas...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is t...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Whenever I meet with anything agreeable in this world it surprises me so much -- and pleases me so m...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON With just enough of learning to misquote.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON When we think we lead we are most led.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON America is a model of force and freedom and moderation -- with all the coarseness and rudeness of it...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning an...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Life's enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON A mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and when it is over, anyth...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Friendship is Love without his wings!
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I have always laid it down as a maxim --and found it justified by experience --that a man and a woma...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I have had, and may have still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in life, who are like one's ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Man's love is of man's life a part; it is a woman's whole existence. In her first passion, a woman l...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Who loves, raves.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a ti...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Adversity is the first path to truth.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON But I hate things all fiction... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fa...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Romances I never read like those I have seen.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, and what a parcel of Scoundrels I h...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON In general I do not draw well with literary men -- not that I dislike them but I never know what to ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The lapse of ages changes all things -- time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The French courage proceeds from vanity
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON As to Don Juan, confess that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but i...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Poetry should only occupy the idle.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence --this may look like affectation but it ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself...that a tiger is an optical illusion--well,...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Of all the barbarous middle ages, that which is most barbarous is the middle age of man! it is -- I ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON My time has been passed viciously and agreeably; at thirty-one so few years months days hours or min...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON A lady of a certain age, which means certainly aged.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I always looked to about thirty as the barrier of any real or fierce delight in the passions, and de...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. Fro...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Thy decay's still impregnate with divinity.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON They never fail who die in a great cause.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON This place is the Devil, or at least his principal residence, they call it the University, but any o...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everythi...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON And after all, what is a lie?
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON For the sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast. And the heart must pause to br...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hai...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, and yet a third of life is passed in sleep.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he p...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Critics are already made.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe --you might as well tell a man not to wake bu...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it o...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I have always believed that all things depended upon Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Tempted fate will leave the loftiest star.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON A bargain is in its very essence a hostile transaction do not all men try to abate the price of all ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON He scratched his ear, the infallible resource to which embarrassed people have recourse.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I should like to know who has been carried off, except poor dear me -- I have been more ravished mys...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The busy have no time for tears.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not t...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom,
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;
But on thy turf ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON To fly from, need not be to hate, makind:
All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
Nor ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Smiles form the channel of a future tear.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality. And dreams in their development have bre...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Sincerity may be humble, but she cannot be servile.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The dead have been awakened -- shall I sleep? The world's at war with tyrants -- shall I crouch? the...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past--
For years fleet away with the wings of t...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The good old times -- all times when old are good.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON This sort of adoration of the real is but a heightening of the beau ideal.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates -- but pages might be filled up, as vainly as before, with the sad usage...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fev...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatio...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire -- in the midst of myriads of...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labor in your fields and serve in your ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON So much alarmed that she is quite alarming, All Giggle, Blush, half Pertness, and half Pout.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms,...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I know that two and two make four -- and should be glad to prove it too if I could -- though I must ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter but do not admit the excuses except in cour...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, trave...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Prolonged endurance tames the bold.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave not...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The way to be immortal (I mean not to die at all) is to have me for your heir. I recommend you to pu...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, is much more common where the climate's sultry.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a grand peut-tre --but still it is a grand one....
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The Cardinal is at his wit's end -- it is true that he had not far to go.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Keep thy smooth words and juggling homilies for those who know thee not.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Opinions are made to be changed --or how is truth to be got at?
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Switzerland is a curst, selfish, swinish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic region of th...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It is very iniquitous to make me pay my debts -- you have no idea of the pain it gives one.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Dreading that climax of all human ills the inflammation of his weekly bills.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Sighing that Nature formed but one such man, and broke the die.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Who tracks the steps of glory to the grave?
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I really cannot know whether I am or am not the Genius you are pleased to call me, but I am very wil...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people, being always excited; women, wine, fame, ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequen...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The place is very well and quiet and the children only scream in a low voice.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON History is the devil's scripture.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON And having wisdom with each studious year, in meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, and shaped hi...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inh...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The heart will break, but broken live on.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Hatred is the madness of the heart.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which d...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
Wh...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON All farewells should be sudden, when forever.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The dew of compassion is a tear.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again, LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated wi...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON There is no instinct like that of the heart.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Fame is the thirst of youth.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very t...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervant...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Out of chaos God made a world, and out of high passions comes a people.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning, nor the microscopic accuracy of the close ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Her great merit is finding out mine -- there is nothing so amiable as discernment.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Oh! might I kiss those eyes of fire,
A million scarce would quench desire;
Still would I stee...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON As falls the dew on quenchless sands, blood only serves to wash ambition's hands.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days --...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON What a strange thing is the propagation of life! A bubble of seed which may be spilt in a whore's la...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Think not I am what I appear.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The first to welcome, foremost to defend.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The Angels were all singing out of tune, and hoarse with having little else to do, excepting to wind...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter. Sermons and soda water the day after.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON And yet a little tumult, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation; such as a revolution,...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spit...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON No more we meet in yonder bowers Absence has made me prone to roving; But older, firmer hearts than ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Science is but the exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON That low vice, curiosity!
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Oh! too convincing -- dangerously dear -- In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The drying up a single tear has more of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper, which makes bank credit like a bark of vapor.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON What an antithetical mind! -- tenderness, roughness -- delicacy, coarseness -- sentiment, sensuality...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON No ear can hear nor tongue can tell the tortures of the inward hell!
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Our thoughts take the wildest flight: Even at the moment when they should arrange themselves in thou...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I like his holiness very much, particularly since an order, which I understand he has lately given, ...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I am always most religious upon a sunshiny day...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pict...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON It is true from early habit, one must make love mechanically as one swims; I was once very fond of b...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction.
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON I swims in the Tagus all across at once, and I rides on an ass or a mule, and swears Portuguese, and...
LORD (GEORGE GORDON) BYRON