Lord Byron Quotes

While common men grow ignorantly old,
The lawyer's brief is like the surgeon's knife,
Dissecting the whole inside of a question,
And with it all the process of digestion.

Above or Love, Hope, Hate or Fear,
It lives all passionless and pure:
An age shall fleet like earthly year;
Its years in moments shall endure.
Away, away, without a wing,
O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly;
A nameless and eternal thing,
Forgetting what it was to die.

Were't the last drop in the well,
As I gasp'd upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell
'T is to thee that I would drink.

It would be difficult, perhaps, to find the annals of a nation less stained with crimes than those of the Armenians, whose virtues have been those of peace, and their vices those of compulsion. But whatever may have been their destiny — and it has been bitter — whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of the most interesting on the globe.

Oh, Time! Why dost not pause? Thy scythe, so dirty
With rust, should surely cease to hack and hew.
Reset it; shave more smoothly, also slower,
If but to keep thy credit as a mower.

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.

But take this with thee: if I was not form'd To prize a love like thine, a mind like thine, Nor dote even on thy beauty — as I've doted On lesser charms, for no cause save that such Devotion was a duty, and I hated All that look'd like a chain for me or others (This even rebellion must avouch); yet hear These words, perhaps among my last — that none E'er valued more thy virtues, though he knew not To profit by them…

The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle.

what’s travel,
Unless it teaches one to quote and cavil?

T is sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels,
By blood or ink; 't is sweet to put an end
To strife; 't is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,
Particularly with a tiresome friend:
Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;
Dear is the helpless creature we defend
Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot
We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.

But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,
Is first and passionate Love — it stands alone,
Like Adam's recollection of his fall;
The Tree of Knowledge has been plucked — all 's known — And Life yields nothing further to recall
Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,
No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven
Fire which Prometheus filched for us from Heaven.

A sailor when the prize has struck in fight,
A miser filling his most hoarded chest,
Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping
As they who watch o'er what they love while sleeping.

For there it lies so tranquil, so beloved,
All that it hath of life with us is living;
So gentle, stirless, helpless, and unmoved,
And all unconscious of the joy 't is giving;
All it hath felt, inflicted, pass'd, and proved,
Hush'd into depths beyond the watcher's diving:
There lies the thing we love with all its errors
And all its charms, like death without its terrors.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes...

In secret we met -
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee? -
With silence and tears

The keenest pangs the wretched find Are rapture to the dreary void, The leafless desert of the mind, The waste of feelings unemployed.

That which would not yield, nor could forget,
Which, when it least appear'd to melt,
Intensely thought, intensely felt:
The deepest ice which ever froze
Can only o'er the surface close;
The living stream lies quick below,
And flows — and cannot cease to flow.