Lord Byron Quotes

453 Sourced Quotes

What want these outlaws conquerors should have but history's purchased page to call them great?

Lord Byron
The poem will please if it is lively—if it is stupid it will fail—but I will have none of your damned cutting and slashing.

Lord Byron
Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

Lord Byron
Who killed John Keats?
"I," says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
"'Twas one of my feats."

Lord Byron
The angels all were singing out of tune, And hoarse with having little else to do, Excepting to wind up the sun and moon, Or curb a runaway young star or two, Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon Broke out of bounds o'er the ethereal blue, Splitting some planet with its beautiful tail, As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale.

Lord Byron
But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws So much, as when we call our old debts in At sixty years, and draw the accounts of evil, And find a deuced balance with the devil.

Lord Byron
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.

Lord Byron
Earth! render back from out thy breast
a remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!

Lord Byron
To what gulfs A single deviation from the track Of human duties leads even those who claim The homage of mankind as their born due, And find it, till they forfeit it themselves!

Lord Byron
Know ye not who would be free themselves must strike the blow? by their right arms the conquest must be wrought?

Lord Byron
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the Universe.

Lord Byron
By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
By thy unfathom'd gulfs of guile,
By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul's hypocrisy;
By the perfection of thine art
Which pass'd for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others' pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee! and compel
Thyself to be thy proper Hell!

Lord Byron
Sublime tobacco! which from east to west
Cheers the tar's labor or the Turkman's rest.

Lord Byron
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed.

Lord Byron
The antique Persians taught three useful things — To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth.

Lord Byron
Tis pleasant purchasing our fellow-creatures; And all are to be sold, if you consider Their passions, and are dext'rous; some by features Are brought up, others by a warlike leader; Some by a place--as tend their years or natures; The most by ready cash--but all have prices, From crowns to kicks, according to their vices.

Lord Byron
In general I do not draw well with literary men—not that I dislike them but—I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication.

Lord Byron
A man must serve his time to every trade
Save censure—critics all are ready made.
Take hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote,
With just enough of learning to misquote.

Lord Byron
History's purchased page to call them great.

Lord Byron
O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper, which makes bank credit like a bark of vapour.

Lord Byron