Lord Byron - Don Juan

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A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

Lord Byron
Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction: if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold!

Lord Byron
'Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.

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

Lord Byron
And thus they form a group that's quite antique,
Half naked, loving, natural, and Greek.

Lord Byron
There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in, Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.

Lord Byron
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.

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
Read your own hearts and Ireland's present story,
Then feed her famine fat with Wellesley's glory.

Lord Byron
What is the end of fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapor.

Lord Byron
Now my sere fancy 'falls into the yellow
Leaf,' and imagination droops her pinion,
And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.

Lord Byron
…That all-softening, overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul—the dinner bell.

Lord Byron
'Tis sweet to hear the watchdog's honest bark Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw near home; 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come.

Lord Byron
A drowsy frowzy poem, called the 'Excursion',
Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

Lord Byron
Let no man grumble when his friends fall off, As they will do like leaves at the first breeze; When your affairs come round, one way or t'other, Go to the coffee house, and take another.

Lord Byron
A lady of a 'certain age', which means
Certainly aged.

Lord Byron
Milton's the prince of poets—so we say;
A little heavy, but no less divine.

Lord Byron
The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set!

Lord Byron
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!

Lord Byron
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be!

Lord Byron
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.

Lord Byron
There is a tide in the affairs of women,
Which, taken at the flood, leads—God knows where.

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

Lord Byron
I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension.

Lord Byron
And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep.

Lord Byron
All human history attests That happiness for man—the hungry sinner! — Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.

Lord Byron
And, after all, what is a Lie? 'Tis but
The truth in masquerade. And I defy
Historian — heroes — lawyers — priests, to put
A fact without some leaven of a lie.

Lord Byron
Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,
Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast,
Is that portentous phrase, 'I told you so.'

Lord Byron
'Whom the gods love die young' was said of yore.
And many deaths do they escape by this.

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

Lord Byron