Lord Byron

Champagne with its foaming whirlsAs white as Cleopatras pearls.

'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.

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

For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

I live not in myself but I become Portion of that around me and to me High mountains are a feeling but the hum Of human cities torture.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

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

Wine cheers the sad revives the old inspires the young makes weariness forget his toil.

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

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

But beef is rare within these oxless isles Goats flesh there is no doubt and kid and mutton And when a holiday upon them smiles A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.

When we think we lead, we are most led.

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

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

The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

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

It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a grand peut-tre, but still it is a grand one. Everybody clings to it the stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of human bipeds is still persuaded that he is immortal.

A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins.

Truth is a gem that is found at a great depth whilst on the surface of the world all things are weighed by the false scale of custom.

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

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

Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction.

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

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

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.

Farewell a word that must be and hath beenA sound which makes us linger yetfarewell

For in itself a thought, a slumbering thought, is capable of years, and curdles a long life into one hour.

They never fail who die in a great cause.

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

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

And after all what is lie Tis but the truth in masquerade.

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

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

The busy have no time for tears.

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

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

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

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

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

Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil.

I cant but say it is an awkward sight to see ones native land receding through the growing waters it unmans one quite especially when life is rather new.

Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality. And dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.

Absence - that common cure of love.

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

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

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.

There is no instinct like that of the heart.

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

The sight of blood to crowds begets the thirst of more, As the first wine-cup leads to the long revel.

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.

Smiles form the channels of a future tear.

Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose, And shook within their pyramids to hear A new Cambyses thundering in their ear; While the dark shades of forty ages stood Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood.

The heart will break but broken live on.

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

Who tracks the steps of glory to the grave?

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

If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher's cleaver.

Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

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?

Be warm be pure be amorous but be chaste.

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

Prolonged endurance tames the bold.

America is a model of force and freedom and moderation - with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people.

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

Ambiguous things that ape goats in their visage, women in their shape.

There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Adversity is the first path to truth.

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.

The dew of compassion is a tear.

Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life - and if Virtue is not its own reward I don't know any other stipend annexed to it.

I speak not of men's creeds "they rest between Man and his Maker.

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

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

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.

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

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

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.

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.

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.

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

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods.

A little stream came tumbling from the height, And struggling into ocean as it might. Its bounding crystal frolick'd in the ray, And gush'd from cliff to crag with saltless spray.

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

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

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.

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

All Heaven and Earth are still though not in sleep but breathless as we grow when feeling most.

A drop of ink may make a million think.

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

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

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.

Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, and daughters sometimes run off with the butler.

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

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.

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

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

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