Lord Byron

No more we meet in yonder bowers Absence has made me prone to roving; But older, firmer hearts than ours, Have found monotony in loving.

— Lord Byron

My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then.

— Lord Byron

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

— Lord Byron

So much alarmed that she is quite alarming, All Giggle, Blush, half Pertness, and half Pout.

— Lord Byron

What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, is much more common where the climate's sultry.

— Lord Byron

And yet a little tumult, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation; such as a revolution, a battle, or an adventure of any lively description.

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

Adversity is the first path to truth.

— Lord Byron

Of all the barbarous middle ages, that which is most barbarous is the middle age of man! it is -- I really scarce know what; but when we hover between fool and sage, and don't know justly what we would be at -- a period something like a printed page, black letter upon foolscap, while our hair grows grizzled, and we are not what we were.

— Lord Byron

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.

— 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

A lady of a certain age, which means certainly aged.

— Lord Byron

I always looked to about thirty as the barrier of any real or fierce delight in the passions, and determined to work them out in the younger ore and better veins of the mine --and I flatter myself (perhaps) that I have pretty well done so --and now the dross is coming.

— Lord Byron

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

— Lord Byron

It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem --and in my esteem age is not estimable.

— Lord Byron

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter. Sermons and soda water the day after.

— Lord Byron

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.

— Lord Byron

He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

America is a model of force and freedom and moderation -- with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people.

— Lord Byron

I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor.

— Lord Byron

The Angels were all singing out of tune, and hoarse with having little else to do, excepting to wind up the sun and moon or curb a runaway young star or two.

— Lord Byron

The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The first to welcome, foremost to defend.

— Lord Byron

Think not I am what I appear.

— Lord Byron

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.

— Lord Byron

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.

— Lord Byron

All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise.

— Lord Byron

Dreading that climax of all human ills the inflammation of his weekly bills.

— 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

Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in it.

— Lord Byron

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

— 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

The lapse of ages changes all things -- time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing about, around, and underneath man, except man himself.

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.

— Lord Byron

Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men.

— Lord Byron

This place is the Devil, or at least his principal residence, they call it the University, but any other appellation would have suited it much better, for study is the last pursuit of the society; the Master eats, drinks, and sleeps, the Fellows drink, dispute and pun, the employments of the undergraduates you will probably conjecture without my description.

— Lord Byron

The dew of compassion is a tear.

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.

— Lord Byron

What an antithetical mind! -- tenderness, roughness -- delicacy, coarseness -- sentiment, sensuality -- soaring and groveling, dirt and deity -- all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!

— Lord Byron

Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire -- in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?

— Lord Byron

O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper, which makes bank credit like a bark of vapor.

— Lord Byron

Oh! too convincing -- dangerously dear -- In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

— Lord Byron

Critics are already made.

— Lord Byron

That low vice, curiosity!

— Lord Byron

For the sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast. And the heart must pause to breathe, and love itself have rest.

— Lord Byron

I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first things in youth and yet last the longest in the dust.

— Lord Byron

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, and yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

Thy decay's still impregnate with divinity.

— Lord Byron

I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

Prolonged endurance tames the bold.

— Lord Byron

I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.

— Lord Byron

Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss.

— Lord Byron

Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter but do not admit the excuses except in courtesy, as when a man treads on your toes and begs your pardon -- the pardon is granted, but the joint aches, especially if there is a corn upon it.

— 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

I awoke one morning and found myself famous.

— Lord Byron

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

— Lord Byron

Fame is the thirst of youth.

— Lord Byron

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.

— 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

All farewells should be sudden, when forever.

— Lord Byron

Tempted fate will leave the loftiest star.

— Lord Byron

But I hate things all fiction... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric -- and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.

— Lord Byron

Romances I never read like those I have seen.

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie.

— Lord Byron

We have progressively improved into a less spiritual species of tenderness -- but the seal is not yet fixed though the wax is preparing for the impression.

— Lord Byron

Our thoughts take the wildest flight: Even at the moment when they should arrange themselves in thoughtful order.

— Lord Byron

A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine and becoming viands.

— Lord Byron

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.

— Lord Byron

A mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and when it is over, anything but friends.

— Lord Byron

Friendship is Love without his wings!

— 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

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

I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people, being always excited; women, wine, fame, the table, even ambition, sate now and then, but every turn of the card and cast of the dice keeps the gambler alive -- besides one can game ten times longer than one can do any thing else.

— Lord Byron

I really cannot know whether I am or am not the Genius you are pleased to call me, but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never can be till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, has sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.

— Lord Byron

All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin.

— Lord Byron

I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual.

— Lord Byron

Who tracks the steps of glory to the grave?

— Lord Byron

Sighing that Nature formed but one such man, and broke the die.

— Lord Byron

So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice.

— Lord Byron

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.

— Lord Byron

Hatred is the madness of the heart.

— Lord Byron

The heart will break, but broken live on.

— Lord Byron

I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.

— Lord Byron

History is the devil's scripture.

— Lord Byron

And having wisdom with each studious year, in meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, and shaped his weapon with an edge severe, sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.

— Lord Byron

The place is very well and quiet and the children only scream in a low voice.

— Lord Byron

But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.

— Lord Byron

Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his main-spring of Mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar of atoms.

— Lord Byron

Keep thy smooth words and juggling homilies for those who know thee not.

— Lord Byron

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.

— Lord Byron

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.

— Lord Byron