Lord Byron - Life Quotes

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That which I am, I am; I did not seek
For life, nor did I make myself.

Lord Byron
How my soul hates This language,
Which makes life itself a lie,
Flattering dust with eternity.

Lord Byron
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.

Lord Byron
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-à-vis?—on a table?—and under it?
Of Don Juan

Lord Byron
We are the fools of Time and Terror: Days
Steal on us, and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.

Lord Byron
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence.

Lord Byron
I live,
But live to die: and, living, see no thing
To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,
A loathsome and yet all invincible
Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I
Despise myself, yet cannot overcome—
And so I live. Would I had never lived!

Lord Byron
She was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all.

Lord Byron
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.

Lord Byron
When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), – sleep, eating, and swilling – buttoning and unbuttoning – how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.

Lord Byron
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication.

Lord Byron
He who grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, So that no wonder waits him.

Lord Byron
I am the very slave of circumstance
And impulse — borne away with every breath!
Misplaced upon the throne — misplaced in life.
I know not what I could have been, but feel
I am not what I should be — let it end.

Lord Byron
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?

Lord Byron
Many are poets, but without the name;For what is Poesy but to createFrom overfeeling Good or Ill; and aimAt an external life beyond our fate,And be the new Prometheus of new men,Bestowing fire from Heaven, and then, too late,Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain

Lord Byron
Years steal
Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb;
And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

Lord Byron
Our life is two fold Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality.

Lord Byron
My best! my last friends!
Let's not unman each other: part at once:
All farewells should be sudden, when for ever,
Else they make an eternity of moments,
And clog the last sad sands of life with tears.
Hence, and be happy: trust me, I am not
Now to be pitied; or far more for what
Is past than present; — for the future, 'tis
In the hands of the deities, if such
There be: I shall know soon. Farewell — Farewell.

Lord Byron
In itself a thought, a slumbering thought is capable of years; and curdles a long life into one hour.

Lord Byron
But first, on earth as vampire sent, Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent, Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race. There from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life, Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid living corse. Thy victims ere they yet expire Shall know the demon for their sire, As cursing thee, thou cursing them, Thy flowers are withered on the stem.

Lord Byron
It is not in the storm nor in the strife
We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,
But in the after-silence on the shore,
When all is lost, except a little life.

Lord Byron
But life will suit
Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit,
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,
All ashes to the taste.

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

Lord Byron
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 Byron
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 Byron