Lord Byron

Time the avenger! unto thee I lift / My hands and eyes and heart and crave of thee a gift.

Society is no one polished horde Formed of two mighty tribes the Bores and the Bored

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?

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

Ah surely nothing dies but something mourns.

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

Half dust half deity unfit alike to sink or soar

All farewells should be sudden when forever.

I love not man the less but Nature more.

Though I love my country I do not love my countrymen.

Adversity is the first path to truth, He who hath proved war storm or woman's rage Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty Has won the experience which is deemed so weighty

Poetry should only occupy the idle.

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

In general I do not draw well with literary men / not that I dislike them but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication.

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.

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

Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle

He who ascends to mountain tops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow, He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below

I am always most religious upon a sunshiny day...

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

Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.

If I should meet thee After long years How should I greet thee? - With silence and tears

Science is but the exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance.

He counted them at break of day - / And when the sun set where were they?

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

A better farmer ne'er brushed dew from lawn / A worse king never left a realm undone!

Those who will not reason are bigots those who cannot are fools and those who dare not are slaves.

But oh ye lords of ladies intellectual Inform us truly - have they not henpecked you all

By many stories, And true we learn the angels are all Tories.

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.

I take the view and always have that if you cannot say what you are going to say in 20 minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it.

The spirit burning but unbent / May writhe rebel - the weak alone repent!

He was the mildest mannered man / That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.

O gold! I still prefer thee unto paper which makes bank credit like a bank of vapor

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

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.

Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labor in your fields and serve in your houses -- that man your navy and recruit your army -- that have enabled you to defy the world and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob, but do not forget that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people.

While stands the Coliseum Rome shall stand, / When falls the Coliseum Rome shall fall, / And when Rome falls - the World.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast.

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.

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

O Man! Thou feeble tenant of an hour Debased by slavery or corrupt by power, Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust Degraded mass of animated dust! Thy love is lust thy friendship all a cheat Thy smiles hypocrisy thy word deceit! By n

I have no consistency except in politics, and that probably arises from my indifference to the subject altogether

A lady of a `certain age' which means / Certainly aged.

Death so called is a thing which makes men weep: and yet a third of Life is passed in sleep

But Tom's no more - and so no more of Tom.

The heart will break but broken live on.

Did ye not hear it? - No, 'twas but the wind / Or the car rattling o'er the stony street,/ On with the dance! let joy be unconfined, / No sleep till morn when Youth and Pleasure meet / To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.

I wish he would explain his explanation

Think not I am what I appear.

Prolonged endurance tames the bold.

The would-be wits and can't-be gentlemen I leave them to their daily "tea is ready " Smug coterie and literary lady

Where'er we tread 'tis haunted holy ground.

She had consented to create again / That Adam called `the happiest of men'.

Comus all allows, / Champagne dice music or your neighbour's spouse.

Self-love for ever creeps out like a snake to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.

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

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.

May none these marks efface! / For they appeal from tyranny to God.

Talk six times with the same single lady and you may get the wedding dress ready

'Tis pleasant sure to see one's name in print, A book's a book although there's nothing' in 't

This sort of adoration of the real is but a heightening of the beau ideal.

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

In truth he was a noble steed.

Nothing so difficult as a beginning In poesy unless perhaps the end

Sublime tobacco! which from east to west Cheers the tar's labor or the Turkman's rest

Critics are already made.

For in itself a thought a slumbering thought is capable of years and curdles a long life into one hour.

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

A `strange coincidence' to use a phrase / By which such things are settled nowadays.

My hair is grey but not with years / Nor grew it white / In a single night / As men's have grown from sudden fears.

Adieu adieu! my native shore, Fades o'er the waters blue.

The drying up a single tear has more - Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore

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, and even then if I could have been certain to haunt her - but I won't dwell upon these trifling family matters

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

What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing and for whom you care as little.

Let us not unman each other, part at once, all farewells should be sudden when forever

Explaining metaphysics to the nation - / I wish he would explain his explanation.

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.

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

The devil was the first democrat

Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce.

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?

Every sense hath been o'erstrung and each frail fibre of the brain sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide

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

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.

One hates an author that's all author.

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, / And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea / When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.

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

And the might of the Gentile unsmote by the sword / Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

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

Better to err with Pope than shine with Pye.

Truth is always strange

When Bishop Berkeley said `there was no matter' / And proved it - 'twas no matter what he said.

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?

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

The tenor's voice is spoilt by affectation And for the bass the beast can only bellow, In fact he had no singing education An ignorant noteless timeless tuneless fellow.

The great art of life is sensation to feel that we exist even in pain.

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place / With one fair Spirit for my minister / That I might all forget the human race / And hating no one love but only her!

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not / Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, / A palace and a prison on each hand.

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.

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?'

Opinions are made to be changed -or how is truth to be got at?

Better to sink beneath the shock than molder piecemeal on the rock

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

Tempted fate will leave the loftiest star.

Be warm but pure, be amorous but be chaste.

If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.

Between two worlds life hovers like a star twixt night and morn upon the horizon's verge.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

Proud of his learning (just enough to quote) He revell'd in his Ciceronian glory: With memory excellent to get by rote With wit to hatch a pun or tell a story Graced with some merit and with more effrontery 'His country's pride ' he came down to

The simple Wordsworth . . . / Who both by precept and example shows / That prose is verse and verse is merely prose.

I loathe that low vice curiosity

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow

My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning nor the microscopic accuracy of the close of such liaisons.

The mountains look on Marathon - / And Marathon looks on the sea, / And musing there an hour alone / I dreamed that Greece might yet be free.

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said Adversity is the first path to truth

Men love in haste but they detest at leisure.

He possessed beauty without vanity strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices

To feel for none is the true social art of the world's stoics - men without a heart

They never fail who die in a great cause.

For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt and vote and raise the price of corn?

I cannot describe to you the despairing sensation of trying to do something for a man who seems incapable or unwilling to do anything further for himself.

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.

And after all what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade

Arm! Arm! it is - it is - the cannon's opening roar!

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.

I want a hero: an uncommon want, When every year and month sends forth a new one, Till after cloying the gazettes with can't, The age discovers he is not the true one, Of such as these I should not care to vaunt, I'll therefore take our ancient friend

As soon / Seek roses in December - ice in June, / Hope constancy in wind or corn in chaff, / Believe a woman or an epitaph / Or any other thing that's false before / You trust in critics.