Byron, George Gordon.

English romantic poet, 1788 – 1824.

Links:

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/byron.html

http://www.walrus.com/~gibralto/acorn/germ/GGByron.html

http://www.raindog.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/byronsoc/

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7086/donjuan.htm

http://www.englishhistory.net/byron.html

http://www.2020site.org/lord_byron/

Quotations:

1. “Absence - that common cure of love.”

2. ”Adversity is the first path to truth.”

3. “Alas! The love of women! it is known to be a lovely and fearful thing!”

4. “All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin.”

5. “A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.”

6. “And when we think we lead, we are most led.”

7. “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.”

8. “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?”

9. “Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”

10. ”But words are things,

and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew,

upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands,

perhaps millions, think.”

11. “He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly.”

12. ”If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.”

13. “I had a dream which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars

Did wander darkling in eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air…”

14. “I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.”

15. “In her first passion woman loves her lover,

In all the others all she loves is love.”

16. “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.”

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

18. ”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?”

19. “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.”

20. “Man's love is of man's life a part; it is a woman's whole existence.”

21. “My sun sets to rise again.”

22. “Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, adorer of the ruin, comforter and only healer when the heart hath bled... Time, the avenger!”

23. “Passion is the element in which we live; without it, we hardly vegetate.”

24. “She walks in Beauty, like the night

Of cloudness climes and starry skies,

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which heaven and gaudy day denies.”

25. "Sleep hath it's own world, - And a wide realm of wild reality. - And dreams in their development have breath, - And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy."

26. “Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of life.”

27. "The power of Thought, - the magic of the Mind!"

28. “There's music in the sighing of a reed;

There's music in the gushing of a rill;

There's music in all things, if men had ears:

Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.”

29. "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."

30. “There is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.”

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

32. “Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”

33. “'Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.”

34. ”'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.”

35. ”To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.”

36. ”When Newton saw an apple fall, he found ...
A mode of proving that the earth turnd round
In a most natural whirl, called gravitation;
And thus is the sole mortal who could grapple
Since Adam, with a fall or with an apple.”

37. “Who loves, raves.”

38. "Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven;

A spark of that immortal fire

With angels shared, by Allah given

To lift from earth our low desire."

Last update: May 25^th, 2002.