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Nature
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As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of others.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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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.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron, from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
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Oceans
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Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Opinion
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Opinions are made to be changed --or how is truth to be got at?
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Pain
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The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Parties
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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.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Passion
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There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Past, the
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From the wreck of the past, which hath perish
Written to his half sister following his exile on grounds of incest with her.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron, To Augusta
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Patriotism
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Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Philosophy
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Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates -- but pages might be filled up, as vainly as before, with the sad usage of all sorts of sages, who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore! The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Pleasure
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There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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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.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Poetry
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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?
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Poetry should only occupy the idle.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence --this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Politics
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I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Punishment
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I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Purpose
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I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Reading
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The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Reality
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This sort of adoration of the real is but a heightening of the beau ideal.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Relationships
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My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning, nor the microscopic accuracy of the close of such liaisons.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Her great merit is finding out mine -- there is nothing so amiable as discernment.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Religion
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I am always most religious upon a sunshiny day...
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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I like his holiness very much, particularly since an order, which I understand he has lately given, that no more miracles shall be performed.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Books by and about Lord (George Gordon) Byron