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BYRON, George Gordon Noel Quotes
6th Baron (1788-1821,), English poet
Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, and daughters sometimes run off with the butler.
Adversity is the first path to truth.
He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.
It is hoped that, with all modern improvements, a way will be discovered of getting rid of bores; for it is too bad that a poor wretch can be punished for stealing your handkerchief or gloves, and that no punishment can be inflicted on those who steal your time, and with it your temper and patience, as well as the bright thoughts that might have entered your mind, if they had not been frightened away by the bore.
All is to be feared where all is to be lost.
Christians have burned each other, quite persuaded that all the Apostles would have done as they did.
The Christian has greatly the advantage of the unbeliever, having everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Men are the sport of circumstances, when the circumstances seem the sport of men.
The dew of compassion is a tear.
A quiet conscience makes one so serene.
There is no future pang can deal that justice on the self-condemned, he deals on his own soul.
Man's conscience is the oracle of God.
Cleverness and cunning are incompatible.—I never saw them united.—The latter is the resource of the weak, and is only natural to them.—Children and fools are always cunning, but clever people never.
I loathe that low vice, curiosity.
Danger levels man and brute, and all are fellows in their need.
Tom's no more—and so no more of Tom.
Deformity is daring; it is its essence to overtake mankind by heart and soul and make itself the equal, aye, the superior of others.
The devil was the first democrat.
None are so desolate but something dear—dearer than self,—possesses or is possessed.
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.
Ah! to what gulfs a single deviation from the track of human duties leads!
To what gulfs a single deviation from the path of human duties leads!
Let them ease their hearts with prate of equal rights, which man never knew.
A paler shadow strews its mantle over the mountains; parting day dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues with a new color as it gasps away.
Adversity is the first path to truth. He who hath proved war, storm, or woman's rage, whether his winters be eighteen or eighty, hath won the experience which is deemed so weighty.
Experience, that chill touchstone whose sad proof reduces all things from their false hue.
There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric; pure invention is but the talent of a deceiver.
They never fail who die in a great cause.
In that fatal word,—howe'er we promise, hope, believe, there breathes despair.
I feel my immortality o'ersweep all pains, all tears, all time, all fears, and like the eternal thunders of the deep, peal to my ears this truth—"Thou livest forever."
All the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher notions of its own importance would never weigh in my mind against the pure and pious interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in my welfare.
To what deep gulfs a single deviation from the track of human duties leads.
Oh, that pang, where more than madness lies, the worm that will not sleep, and never dies.
All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin.
Hatred is the madness of the heart.
There is no instinct like that of the heart.
Without hearts there is no home.
I feel my immortality o'ersweep all pains, all tears, all time, all fears; and peal, like the eternal thunders of the deep, into my ears this truth—thou livest forever!
The keenest pangs the wretched find are rapture to the dreary void,—the leafless desert of the mind—the waste of feelings unemployed.
A drop of ink may make a million think.
Every sense hath been o'erstrung, and each frail fibre of the brain sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide.
He who is only just is cruel.—Who on earth could live were all judged justly?
Heaven in sunshine will requite the kind.
The drying up a single tear, has more of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.
A long, long kiss—the kiss of youth and love.
Eden revives in the first kiss of love.
Man's love is of man's life a part; it is woman's whole existence.
Alas! the love of women! it is known to be a lovely and a fearful thing; for all of theirs upon that die is thrown; and if 'tis lost, life has no more to bring to them but mockeries of the past alone.
With thee all toils are sweet; each clime hath charms; earth—sea alike—our world within our arms!
That trembling vessel of the pole, the feeling compass, navigation's soul.
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit to sink or soar.
Man! thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.
The bloom or blight of all men's happiness.
Fools love the martyrdom of fame.
Such it hath been, and shall be, that many still must labor for the one; it is nature's doom.
Melancholy is a fearful gift; what is it but the telescope of truth, which brings life near in utter darkness, making the cold reality too real?
Melancholy spreads itself betwixt heaven and earth, like envy between man and man, and is an everlasting mist.
Joy's recollection is no longer joy, while sorrow's memory is sorrow still.
Men are the sport of circumstances, when the circumstances seem the sport of men.
Ready money is Aladdin's lamp.
The morn is up again, the dewy morn, with breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, laughing the clouds away with playful scorn, and glowing into day.
But mighty nature bounds as from her birth: the sun is in the heavens, and life on earth; flowers in the valley, splendor in the beam, health on the gale, and freshness in the stream.
Night wanes; the vapors round the mountains curled, melt into morn, and light awakes the world.
How sweet and soothing is this hour of calm! I thank thee, night! for thou hast chased away these horrid bodements which, amidst the throng, I could not dissipate: and with the blessing of thy benign and quiet influence now will I to my couch, although to rest is almost wronging such a night as this.
In her starry shade of dim and solitary loveliness, I learn the language of another world.
The busy have no time for tears.
Let us not unman each other; part at once; all farewells should be sudden, when forever.
No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are passed.
Oh, nature's noblest gift,—my gray goose-quill!
Physicians mend or end us; but though in health we sneer, when sick we call them to attend us, without the least propensity to jeer.
The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes, and feel for what their duty bids them do.
There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
I have met with most poetry on trunks; so that I am apt to consider the trunk-maker as the sexton of authorship.
There is no future pang can deal that justice on the self-condemned, that he deals on his own soul.
With just enough of learning to misquote.
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life: the evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.
Who falls from all he knows of bliss, dares little into what abyss.
Indisputably the believers in the gospel have a great advantage over all others, for this simple reason, that, if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disappointment.
Whatever definitions men have given of religion, I find none so accurately descriptive of it as this: that it is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart and life.
There is no future pang can deal that justice on the self-condemned, he deals on his own soul.
Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away.
Cicero was not so eloquent as thou, thou nameless column with the buried base.
With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe.
By satire kept in awe, they shrink from ridicule, though not from law.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—roll, ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; man marks the earth with ruin—his control stops with the shore; upon the watery plain the wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain a shadow of man's ravage, save his own, when, for a moment like a drop of rain, he sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, without a grave, unknell'd, un-coffin'd, and unknown.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form glasses itself in tempests: in all time, calm or convulsed—in breeze, or gale, or storm, icing the pole, or in the torrid clime dark-heaving;—boundless, endless, and sublime—the image of eternity—the throne of the invisible; even from out thy slime the monsters of the deep are made; each zone obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
There is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar.
There was a laughing devil in his sneer, which raised emotions both of rage and fear; and where his frown of hatred darkly fell, hope withering fled, and mercy sighed farewell.
Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tribes, the bores and bored.
A soldier, a mere tool, a kind of human sword in a fiend's hand; the other is master-mover of this warlike puppet.
If from society we learn to live, it is solitude should teach us how to die.
Amid the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, to hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, and roam along, the world's tired denizen, with none to bless us, none whom we can bless; this is to be alone; this, this is solitude.
Solitude has but one disadvantage; it is apt to give one too high an opinion of one's self. In the world we are sure to be often reminded of every known or supposed defect we may have.
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.
In solitude, where we are least alone.
Sorrow preys upon its solitude, and nothing more diverts it from its sad visions of the other world, than calling it at moments back to this. The busy have no time for tears.
Sorrows are our best educators. A man can see further through a tear than a telescope.
Grief should be the instructor of the wise: 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.
Ye stars, that are the poetry of heaven!
To feel for none is the true social art of the world's stoics—men without a heart.
Thou earliest minister of the Almighty, who chose thee for his shadow; thou chief star, centre of many stars, thou dost rise, and shine, and set in glory!
Time! the corrector where our judgments err; the test of truth, and love; the sole philosopher, for all beside are sophists.
There is no traitor like him whose domestic treason plants the poniard within the breast that trusted to his truth.
It is strange but true; for truth is always strange, stranger than fiction.
Parting day dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues with a new color as it gasps away, the last still loveliest, till 'tis gone, and all is gray.
Tyranny is far the worst of treasons.—The prince who neglects or violates his trust is more a brigand than the robber-chief.
Vice—that digs her own voluptuous tomb.
He who surpasses or subdues mankind must look down on the hate of those below.
Lovers' vows seem sweet in every whispered word.
Most men, until by losing rendered sager, will back their opinions by a wager.
'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come.
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life; the evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.
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