Quotes from George Gordon Byron

This is the age of oddities let loose.

Oh who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried.

Despair and Genius are too oft connected

A timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound.

Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda water the day after. Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication: Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk The hopes of all men, and of every nation; Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk Of life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion: But to return--Get very drunk; and when You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then.

He knew himself a villain—but he deem'd The rest no better than the thing he seem'd; And scorn'd the best as hypocrites who hid Those deeds the bolder spirit plainly did. He knew himself detested, but he knew The hearts that loath'd him, crouch'd and dreaded too. Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt From all affection and from all contempt

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.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore.

Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed there must be evil.

Between two worlds life hovers like a star, 'Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge. How little do we know that which we are! How less what we may be! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge, Lash'd from the foam of ages; while the graves Of Empires heave but like some passing waves.

Yet I did love thee to the last, As ferverently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, And canst not alter now.

When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home, Let him combat for that of his neighbours; Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome, And get knocked on the head for his labours. To do good to Mankind is the chivalrous plan, And is always as nobly requited; Then battle fro Freedom wherever you can, And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.

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.

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

Time and Nemesis will do that which I would not, were it in my power remote or immediate. You will smile at this piece of prophecy - do so, but recollect it: it is justified by all human experience. No one was ever even the involuntary cause of great evils to others, without a requital: I have paid and am paying for mine - so will you.

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be

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.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven, That in our aspirations to be great, Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, And claim a kindred with you; for ye are A beauty and a mystery, and create In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

More brave than firm, and more disposed to dare And die at once than wrestle with despair...

Be hypocritical, be cautious, be Not what you seem, but always what you see.

and what is writ, is writ, Would it were worthier! but I am not now That which I have been

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.

I cannot conceive why people will always mix up my own character and opinions with those of the imaginary beings which, as a poet, I have the right and liberty to draw.

I see before me the Gladiator lie: / He leans upon his hand - his manly brow / Consents to death, but conquers agony.