Lord Byron

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near, My greatest grief is that ...
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Opinions are made to be changed - or how is truth to be got at?

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.

The dew of compassion is a tear.

The 'good old times' - all times when old are good.

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

A mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers, and when it is over, anything but friends.

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

Absence - that common cure of love.

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover but will sooner or later find a tyrant.

All farewells should be sudden, when forever.

Adversity is the first path to truth.

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin.

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.

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

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

Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away, A single laugh demolished the right arm Of his country.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence, the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.

Fame is the thirst of youth.

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

Friendship is Love without his wings!

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

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near, My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.

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

Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.

He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.

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

I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual.

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

I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.

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

I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.

I love not man the less, but Nature more.

I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.

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

I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor.

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.

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

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

It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe - you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.

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

Life's enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.

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

It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.

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

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk, the best of life is but intoxication.

Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his main-spring of Mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar of atoms.

Lovers may be - and indeed generally are - enemies, but they never can be friends, because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a something of Self in all their speculations.

Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

Man's love is of man's life a part, it is a woman's whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.

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

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.

Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world, whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers.

One certainly has a soul, but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that of any other.

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure, men love in haste but they detest at leisure.

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

Out of chaos God made a world, and out of high passions comes a people.

Romances I ne'er read like those I have seen.

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.

Prolonged endurance tames the bold.

Smiles form the channels of a future tear.

Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.

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

Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived by them.

Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tries, the Bores and Bored.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.

The Cardinal is at his wit's end - it is true that he had not far to go.

The busy have no time for tears.

The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatsoever, for my heart always alights upon the nearest perch.

The dew of compassion is a tear.

The 'good old times' - all times when old are good.

The place is very well and quiet and the children only scream in a low voice.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

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

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone.

The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The first to welcome, foremost to defend.

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?

There is no instinct like that of the heart.

There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.

There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in 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.

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

This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

They never fail who die in a great cause.

Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure.

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

'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.

Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction.

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

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

What a strange thing man is, and what a stranger thing woman.

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.

Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.

What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.

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, as I am now.

Who tracks the steps of glory to the grave?

Who loves, raves.

Women hate everything which strips off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, or it would rob them of their weapons.

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?

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.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!