Famous George Gordon Lord Byron Quotations

First 1 Last 
"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."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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?"
by 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. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem --and in my esteem age is not estimable."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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?"
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"A lady of a certain age, which means certainly aged."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, and what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, and what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way; -- all this comes of Authorship."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Romances I never read like those I have seen."
by 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 lap, or in the orgasm of a voluptuous dream, might (for aught we know) have formed a Caesar or a Bonaparte -- there is nothing remarkable recorded of their sires, that I know of."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Our thoughts take the wildest flight: Even at the moment when they should arrange themselves in thoughtful order."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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!"
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper, which makes bank credit like a bark of vapor."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Critics are already made."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"That low vice, curiosity!"
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"The drying up a single tear has more of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Oh! too convincing -- dangerously dear -- In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!"
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by 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 pass'd; And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"And after all, what is a lie?"
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts."
by 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 wisdom."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Friendship is Love without his wings!"
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself...that a tiger is an optical illusion--well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, is much more common where the climate's sultry."
by 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. Everybody clings to it --the stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of human bipeds is still persuaded that he is immortal."
by 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 put me in your will and you will see that (as long as I live at least) you will never even catch cold."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"All farewells should be sudden, when forever."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Lovers may be -- and indeed generally are -- enemies, but they never can be friends, because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a something of Self in all their speculations."
by 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 all."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Constancy... that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"All tragedies are finished by a death, All comedies are ended by a marriage; The future states of both are left to faith, For authors fear description might disparage The worlds to come of both. . . ."
by 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 say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"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."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment --but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?"
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover -- but will sooner or later find a tyrant."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Alas! how deeply painful is all payment!"
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Ready money is Aladdin's lamp."
by 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 them once a week."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"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."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"From the wreck of the past, which hath perish"
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by 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 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?"
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Whenever I meet with anything agreeable in this world it surprises me so much -- and pleases me so much (when my passions are not interested in one way or the other) that I go on wondering for a week to come."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"There is no sterner moralist than pleasure."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Poetry should only occupy the idle."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"This sort of adoration of the real is but a heightening of the beau ideal."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past-- For years fleet away with the wings of the dove-- The dearest remembrance will still be the last, Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"The good old times -- all times when old are good."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Science is but the exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"I should like to know who has been carried off, except poor dear me -- I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan war."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"It is true from early habit, one must make love mechanically as one swims; I was once very fond of both, but now as I never swim unless I tumble into the water, I don't make love till almost obliged."
by 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 they buy? I contend that a bargain even between brethren is a declaration of war."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"He scratched his ear, the infallible resource to which embarrassed people have recourse."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Sincerity may be humble, but she cannot be servile."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Smiles form the channel of a future tear."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!"
by Lord (George Gordon) 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."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"The power of thought, the magic of the mind."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, adorer of the ruin, comforter and only healer when the heart hath bled... Time, the avenger!"
by 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 have got a diarrhea and bites from the mosquitoes. But what of that? Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, and of the bitter effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an Islander, 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."
by 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 the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?"
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life -- and if Virtue is not its own reward I don't know any other stipend annexed to it."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron
"'Let there be light!' said God, and there was light. 'Let there be blood!' said man, and there's a sea."
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
"Words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."
by Lord (George Gordon) Byron


Hire a Writer