George Gordon Byron Quotes

“A woman being never at a loss... the devil always sticks by them.”

“A woman being never at a loss... the devil always sticks by them.”

“Have you ever plunged into the immensity of space and time by reading the geological treatises of Cuvier? Borne away on the wings of his genius, have you hovered over the illimitable abyss of the past as if a magician's hand were holding you aloft? As one penetrates from seam to seam, from stratum to stratum and discovers, under the quarries of Montmartre or in the schists of the Urals, those animals whose fossilized remains belong to antediluvian civilizations, the mind is startled to catch a vista of the milliards of years and the millions of peoples which the feeble memory of man and an indestructible divine tradition have forgotten and whose ashes heaped on the surface of our globe, form the two feet of earth which furnish us with bread and flowers. Is not Cuvier the greatest poet of our century? Certainly Lord Byron has expressed in words some aspects of spiritual turmoil; but our immortal natural historian has reconstructed worlds from bleached bones.”

“England is seen at its worst when it has to deal with men like Wilde. In Germany Wilde and Byron are appreciated as authors: in England they still go pecking about their love-affairs. Anyone who calls a book ‘immoral’ or 'moral’ should be caned. A book by itself can be neither. It is only a question of the morality or immorality of the reader. But the English approach all questions of vice with such a curious mixture of curiosity and fear that it’s impossible to deal with them.”

“When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,Let him combat for that of his neighbours;Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,And get knocked on the head for his labours.To do good to Mankind is the chivalrous plan,And is always as nobly requited;Then battle fro Freedom wherever you can,And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.”

“Byron: The luxuries of this place have made me soft.The metal point's gone from my pen, there's nothing left but the feather.Gutman:That may be true.But what can you do about it?Byron:Make a departure.Gutman:From yourself?Byron:From my present self to myself as I used to be!Gutman:That's the furthest departure a man could make!”

“The DreamLord ByronOur life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,A boundary between the things misnamedDeath and existence: 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;They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,They take a weight from off waking toils,They do divide our being; they becomeA portion of ourselves as of our time,And look like heralds of eternity;They pass like spirits of the past -they speakLike sibyls of the future; they have power -The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;They make us what we were not -what they will,And shake us with the vision that's gone by,The dread of vanished shadows -Are they so?Is not the past all shadow? -What are they?Creations of the mind? -The mind can makeSubstances, and people planets of its ownWith beings brighter than have been, and giveA breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.I would recall a vision which I dreamedPerchance in sleep -for in itself a thought,A slumbering thought, is capable of years,And curdles a long life into one hour.----------Il sognoLord ByronDuplice è la nostra vita: il Sonno ha il suo proprio mondo,un confine tra le cose chiamate impropriamentemorte e esistenza: il Sonno ha il proprio mondo,e un vasto reame di sfrenata realtà;e nel loro svolgersi i sogni hanno respiro,e lacrime e tormenti e sfiorano la gioia;lasciano un peso sui nostri pensieri da svegli,tolgono un peso dalle nostre fatiche da svegli,dividono il nostro essere; diventanoparte di noi stessi e del nostro tempo,e sembrano gli araldi dell'eternità;passano come fantasmi del passato, parlanocome Sibille dell'avvenire; hanno potere -la tirannia del piacere e del dolore;ci rendono ciò che non fummo, secondo il loro volere,e ci scuotono con dissolte visioni,col terrore di svanite ombre. Ma sono veramente così?Non è forse tutto un'ombra il passato? Cosa sono?Creazioni della mente? La mente sa crearesostanza, e popolare pianeti, di sua fattura,di esseri più splendenti di quelli mai esistiti, e darerespiro e forma che sopravvivono alla carne.Vorrei richiamare una visione che ho sognatoforse nel sonno, poiché in sé un pensiero,un pensiero assopito, racchiude anni,e in un'ora condensa una lunga vita.”

“Very Like a WhaleOne thing that literature would be greatly the better forWould be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,Can'ts seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but haveto go out of their way to say that it is like something else.What foes it mean when we are toldThat the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experienceTo know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lotof Assyrians.However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity,We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolfon the fold?In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy thereare a great many things,But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purpleand gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big redmouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,at the very most,Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he hadto invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolatethem,With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiersto people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lotof wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets,from Homer to Tennyson;They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanketafter a winter storm.Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanketof snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoeticalblanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly,What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.”

“Like most guys, I had bought into the stereotype that all feminists were white, lesbian, unattractive male bashers who hated all men. But after reading the work of these black feminists, I realized that this was far from the truth. After digging into their work, I came to really respect the intelligence, courage and honesty of these women.Feminists did not hate men. In fact, they loved men. But just as my father had silenced my mother during their arguments to avoid hearing her gripes, men silenced feminists by belittling them in order to dodge hearing the truth about who we are.”

“I thought of Marius. Wild, wonderful, Byronic-fantasy Marius, who had somehow found something he wanted in the everyday quietness of me. Until he hadn't.”

“...methinks the older that one grows, Inclines us more to laugh the scold, though laughterLeaves us so doubly serious shortly after.”