George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS, known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet, peer, and politician who became a revolutionary in the Greek War of Independence, and is considered one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement. Profoundly inspirational Lord Byron quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.
Famous Lord Byron Quotes
Yet truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse herself inspires: This fact, in virtue’s name, let Crabbe attest,- Though Nature’s sternest painter, yet the best. – Lord Byron
Tis the perception of the beautiful, A fine extension of the faculties, Platonic, universal, wonderful, Drawn from the stars, and filtered through the skies, Without which life would be extremely dull – Lord Byron
There is no instinct like that of the heart. – Lord Byron
That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
But I hate things all fiction… there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric – and pure invention is but the talent of a liar. – Lord Byron
When Newton saw an apple fall, he found In that slight startle from his contemplation- ‘Tis said (for I’ll not answer above ground For any sage’s creed or calculation)- A mode of proving that the earth turn’d round In a most natural whirl, called ‘gravitation’; And this is the sole mortal who could grapple, Since Adam, with a fall, or with an apple. – Lord Byron
Let joy be unconfined. – Lord Byron
It is true from early habit, one must make love mechanically as one swims; I was once very fond of both, but now as I never swim unless I tumble into the water, I don’t make love till almost obliged. – Lord Byron
Tis not on youth’s smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past. – Lord Byron
There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything. – Lord Byron
Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. – Lord Byron
But there are wanderers o’er Eternity Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor’d ne’er shall be. – Lord Byron
The poetry of speech. – Lord Byron
Sweet is revenge-especially to women. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down Over the waste of waters; like a veil, Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown Of one whose hate is mask’d but to assail. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. – 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
I think the worst woman that ever existed would have made a man of very passable reputation — they are all better than us and their faults such as they are must originate with ourselves. – Lord Byron
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know. – Lord Byron
Damn description, it is always disgusting. – Lord Byron
And the commencement of atonement is the sense of its necessity. – Lord Byron
Who falls from all he knows of bliss, Cares little into what abyss. – Lord Byron
And these vicissitudes come best in youth; For when they happen at a riper age, People are apt to blame the Fates, forsooth, And wonder Providence is not more sage. Adversity is the first path to truth: He who hath proved war, storm, or woman’s rage, Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty, Has won experience which is deem’d so weighty. – Lord Byron
All tragedies are finished by a death, All comedies are ended by a marriage. – Lord Byron
I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness. – Lord Byron
Hatred is the madness of the heart. – Lord Byron
Always laugh when you can; it is cheap medicine. Merriment is a philosophy not well understood. It is the sunny side of existence. – Lord Byron
But stories somehow lengthen when begun. – Lord Byron
America is a model of force and freedom and moderation – with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people. – Lord Byron
I am surrounded here by parsons and methodists, but as you will see, not infested with the mania. – Lord Byron
There is pleasure in the pathless woods. – Lord Byron
Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, Not for thy faults, but mine. – 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 woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover – but will sooner or later find a tyrant. – Lord Byron
We are all 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
By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress. – 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
The art of angling, the cruelest, the coldest and the stupidest of pretended sports. – Lord Byron
Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda water the day after. Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication: Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk The hopes of all men, and of every nation; Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk Of life’s strange tree, so fruitful on occasion: But to return–Get very drunk; and when You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then. – Lord Byron
To be perfectly original one should think much and read little, and this is impossible, for one must have read before one has learnt to think. – Lord Byron
Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, and what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, and what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way; – all this comes of Authorship. – Lord Byron
The English winter – ending in July to recommence in August. – Lord Byron
Self-praise is no praise at all. – Lord Byron
Though the day of my Destiny ‘s over, And the star of my Fate hath declined, Thy soft heart refused to discover The faults which so many could find. – Lord Byron
Constancy… that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal. – Lord Byron
The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonized the whole — And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul! – Lord Byron
Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal. – Lord Byron
I am never long, even in the society of her I love, without yearning for the company of my lamp and my library. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
I cannot describe to you the despairing sensation of trying to do something for a man who seems incapable or unwilling to do anything further for himself. – Lord Byron
No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are passed. – Lord Byron
It is very iniquitous to make me pay my debts – you have no idea of the pain it gives one. – Lord Byron
Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship. – Lord Byron
Since Eve ate the apple, much depends on dinner. – Lord Byron
Tis an old lesson; time approves it true, And those who know it best, deplore it most; When all is won that all desire to woo, The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost. – Lord Byron
He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below. – Lord Byron
I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
The lapse of ages changes all things – time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing about, around, and underneath man, except man himself. – Lord Byron
There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium’s capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell. But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! – Lord Byron
I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference to the subject altogether. – Lord Byron
They say that Hope is happiness But genuine Love must prize the past; And Mem’ry wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose first — they set the last. And all that mem’ry loves the most Was once our only hope to be: And all that hope adored and lost Hath melted into memory. Alas! It is delusion all– The future cheats us from afar: Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are. – Lord Byron
She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes. – Lord Byron
thou beautiful And unimaginable ether! and Ye multiplying masses of increased And still increasing lights! what are ye? what Is this blue wilderness of interminable Air, where ye roll along, as I have seen The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden? Is your course measur’d for ye? Or do ye Sweep on in your unbounded revelry Through an aerial universe of endless Expansion,–at which my soul aches to think,– Intoxicated with eternity. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
The dew of compassion is a tear. – Lord Byron
Socrates said, our only knowledge was To know that nothing could be known; a pleasant Science enough, which levels to an ass Each Man of Wisdom, future, past, or present. Newton, (that Proverb of the Mind,) alas! Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent, That he himself felt only like a youth Picking up shells by the great Ocean-Truth. – Lord Byron
In commitment, we dash the hopes of a thousand potential selves. – Lord Byron
Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon. – 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
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction. – Lord Byron
Eat, drink and love…the rest is not worth a nickel. – Lord Byron
Happiness was born a twin. – Lord Byron
If I could always read, I should never feel the want of company. – Lord Byron
A small drop of ink makes thousands, perhaps millions… think. – Lord Byron
I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all. – Lord Byron
They truly mourn, that mourn without a witness. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
There are some feelings time cannot benumb, Nor torture shake. – Lord Byron
Sublime tobacco! which from east to west, Cheers the tar’s labor or the Turkman’s rest; Which on the Moslem’s ottoman divides His hours, and rivals opium and his brides; Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand, Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand: Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe, When tipp’d with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe; Like other charmers wooing the caress, More dazzlingly when daring in full dress; Yet thy true lovers more admire by far Thy naked beauties Give me a cigar! – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
You don’t love a woman because she is beautiful, but she is beautiful because you love her. Never underestimate the power of love. The way to love anything is to realize it may be lost. The heart has its reasons that reason does not know at all. Music is love in search of a word. There is pleasure in the pathless woods; there is a rapture on the lonely shore; There is society, where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar. – Lord Byron
Adversity is the first path to truth. – Lord Byron
Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tries, the Bores and Bored. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
The simple Wordsworth . . . / Who, both by precept and example, shows / That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose. – Lord Byron
Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray. – Lord Byron
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great! – Lord Byron
Fame is the thirst of youth. – Lord Byron
I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty. – Lord Byron
Oh, for a forty-parson power to chant Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh, for a hymn Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt, Not practice! – Lord Byron
You have to have a passion for your work. How can we expect people to be passionate if you, as their coach, does not have a passion? Coaching has to be something that gives you passion and energy. – Lord Byron
The devil was the first democrat. – Lord Byron
He makes a solitude and calls it – peace! – Lord Byron
I depart, Whither I know not; but the hour’s gone by When Albion’s lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye. – Lord Byron
I am not now That which I have been. – Lord Byron
Keep thy smooth words and juggling homilies for those who know thee not. – Lord Byron
Egeria! sweet creation of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast. – Lord Byron
In solitude, where we are least alone. – Lord Byron
And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear. – Lord Byron
What a strange thing is man! And what a stranger is woman. – Lord Byron
That prose is a verse, and verse is a prose; convincing all, by demonstrating plain – poetic souls delight in prose insane. – Lord Byron
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. – Lord Byron
I live, but live to die: and, living, see nothing 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
Despair and Genius are too oft connected. – Lord Byron
Go let thy less than woman’s hand Assume the distaff not the brand. – Lord Byron
This sort of adoration of the real is but a heightening of the beau ideal. – Lord Byron
What want these outlaws conquerors should have but history’s purchased page to call them great? – Lord Byron
Think’st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice– The weakness and the wickedness of luxury– The negligence–the apathy–the evils Of sensual sloth–produces ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing. – Lord Byron
Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! – Lord Byron
Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves. – Lord Byron
I have imbibed such a love for money that I keep some sequins in a drawer to count, and cry over them once a week. – Lord Byron
The best prophet of the future is the past. – Lord Byron
I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone. – Lord Byron
What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? The hearts bleed longest, and heals but to wear That which disfigures it. – Lord Byron
Reason is so unreasonable, that few people can say they are in possession of it. – Lord Byron
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure. – Lord Byron
‘Tis solitude should teach us how to die; It hath no flatterers; vanity can give, No hollow aid; alone – man with God must strive. – Lord Byron
I deny nothing, but doubt everything. – Lord Byron
Whatsoever thy birth, Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. – Lord Byron
Prolonged endurance tames the bold. – Lord Byron
All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin. – Lord Byron
I have had, and may have still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in life, who are like one’s partners in the waltz of this world -not much remembered when the ball is over. – Lord Byron
This is the age of oddities let loose. – Lord Byron
I am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long – such a strange melange of good and evil. – Lord Byron
If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself…that a tiger is an optical illusion–well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive. – Lord Byron
Land of lost gods and godlike men. – Lord Byron
The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie. – Lord Byron
Had sigh’d to many, though he loved but one. – Lord Byron
A drop of ink may make a million think. – Lord Byron
The drying up a single tear has more, of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore. – Lord Byron
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication. – Lord Byron
Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure. – Lord Byron
It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe; you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep. – Lord Byron
What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little. – Lord Byron
I am always most religious upon a sunshiny day. – Lord Byron
Of all tales ’tis the saddest–and more sad, Because it makes us smile. – Lord Byron
Heaven gives its favorites-early death. – Lord Byron
Of religion I know nothing — at least, in its favor. – Lord Byron
A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer? – Lord Byron
We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive. – Lord Byron
I learned to love despair. – Lord Byron
Good work and joyous play go hand in hand. When play stops, old age begins. Play keeps you from taking life too seriously. – Lord Byron
