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George Gordon Byron Quotes
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George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known as Lord Byron, was an English poet, peer, politician, and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems, Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and the short lyric poem, "She Walks in Beauty".

He travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years in Venice, Ravenna and Pisa, where he had a chance to frequent his friend the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in his brief life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died in 1824 at the age of 36, from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi.

Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was both celebrated and castigated in life for his aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs – with men as well as women, as well as rumours of a scandalous liaison with his half-sister – and self-imposed exile. His only legitimate child, Ada Lovelace, is regarded by some as the first computer programmer based on her notes for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. His illegitimate children include Allegra Byron, who died in childhood, and possibly, Elizabeth Medora Leigh.

✵ 22. January 1788 – 19. April 1824  •  Other names Lord Byron, Lord George Gordon Noel Byron
George Gordon Byron photo
George Gordon Byron: 227 quotes9 likes

George Gordon Byron Quotes

“I am ashes where once I was fire…”

George Gordon Byron

Source: Selected Poems

“There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears;
The earth is but the music of the spheres.”

George Gordon Byron

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

George Gordon Byron

Inscription on the monument of a Newfoundland dog (1808).

“Fare thee well, and if for ever
Still for ever fare thee well.”

George Gordon Byron

Fare Thee Well http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-FTW46.htm, st. 1 (1816). <br class="br">Context: Fare thee well! and if forever,<br>Still forever, fare thee well:<br>Even though unforgiving, never<br>&#x27;Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.

“I'll publish right or wrong:
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.”

George Gordon Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Line 5.

“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast.”

George Gordon Byron

The Destruction of Sennacherib, st. 3.
Hebrew Melodies (1815)
Source: Selected Poems

“In solitude, where we are least alone.”

George Gordon Byron

“On with the dance! let joy be unconfin'd;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the Glowing Hours with Flying feet.”

George Gordon Byron Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Source: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

“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.”

George Gordon 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.”

George Gordon Byron

“This is the age of oddities let loose.”

George Gordon Byron Don Juan

Source: Don Juan

“Oh who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried.”

George Gordon Byron

Canto I, stanza 1; this can be compared to: "To all nations their empire will be dreadful, because their ships will sail wherever billows roll or winds can waft them", Dalrymple, Memoirs, vol. iii, p. 152; "Wherever waves can roll, and winds can blow", Charles Churchill, The Farewell, Line 38.
The Corsair (1814)

“When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.”

George Gordon Byron

“I do not believe in any religion, I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this life without speculating upon another.”

George Gordon Byron

“Despair and Genius are too oft connected”

George Gordon Byron

Source: Byron Poems

“Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.”

George Gordon Byron

St. 3.
So, We'll Go No More A-Roving (1817)

“He left a corsair's name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.”

George Gordon Byron

Canto III, stanza 24; this can be compared to: "Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, "Democritus to the Reader".
The Corsair (1814)

“I die — but first I have possessed,
And come what may, I have been blessed.”

George Gordon Byron The Giaour

Source: The Giaour (1813), Line 1114.

“Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!”

George Gordon Byron book The Bride of Abydos

Canto I, stanza 1; this can be compared to: "Know'st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom, / Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom, / Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows, / And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose!" Goethe, Wilhelm Meister.
The Bride of Abydos (1813)

“What's drinking?
A mere pause from thinking!”

George Gordon Byron

The Deformed Transformed, Act III, sc. i (1824).

“Patience! Hence—that word was made
For brutes of burthen, not for birds of prey;
Preach it to mortals of a dust like thine,—
I am not of thine order.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act II, scene i.
Manfred (1817)

“Knowledge is not happiness, and science
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act II, scene iv.
Manfred (1817)

“Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.”

George Gordon Byron

Stanza 45.
Beppo (1818)

“No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe.”

George Gordon Byron

Canto III, stanza 22.
The Corsair (1814)

“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.”

George Gordon Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Line 839.

“And thou wert lovely to the last,
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.”

George Gordon Byron

And Thou Art Dead as Young and Fair (1812).

“Oh, Amos Cottle! Phœbus! what a name!”

George Gordon Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Line 399.

“The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the Night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,
I learn'd the language of another world.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act III, scene iv.
Manfred (1817)

“Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.”

George Gordon Byron

Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-StanzaFP91.htm, st. 1 (1821).

“The heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old!
The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act III, scene iv.
Manfred (1817)

“Oh! if thou hast at length
Discover'd that my love is worth esteem,
I ask no more—but let us hence together,
And I — let me say we — shall yet be happy.
Assyria is not all the earth—we'll find
A world out of our own — and be more bless'd
Than I have ever been, or thou, with all
An empire to indulge thee.”

George Gordon Byron Sardanapalus

Act IV, scene 1.
Sardanapalus (1821)

“My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore.
Here's a double health to thee!”

George Gordon Byron

To Thomas Moore http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-TomMoore.htm, st. 1 (1817).

“Who track the steps of glory to the grave.”

George Gordon Byron

Source: Monody on the Death of Sheridan (1816), Line 74.

“Whate'er
I may have been, or am, doth rest between
Heaven and myself; I shall not choose a mortal
To be my mediator.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act III, scene i.
Manfred (1817)