George Gordon Byron: Likeness

George Gordon Byron was English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Explore interesting quotes on likeness.
George Gordon Byron: 454 quotes9 likes

“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:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”

George Gordon Byron book Hebrew Melodies

She Walks in Beauty http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-SWB42.htm, st. 1. The subject of these lines was Mrs. R. Wilmot.—Berry Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 7. <br class="br">Hebrew Melodies (1815)

“A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source”

George Gordon Byron

III.
Prometheus (1816)
Context: Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself — and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can decry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

“I was not form'd
To prize a love like thine, a mind like thine,
Nor dote even on thy beauty — as I've doted
On lesser charms, for no cause save that such
Devotion was a duty, and I hated
All that look'd like a chain for me or others”

George Gordon Byron Sardanapalus

Act IV, scene 1.
Sardanapalus (1821)
Context: But take this with thee: if I was not form'd
To prize a love like thine, a mind like thine,
Nor dote even on thy beauty — as I've doted
On lesser charms, for no cause save that such
Devotion was a duty, and I hated
All that look'd like a chain for me or others
(This even rebellion must avouch); yet hear
These words, perhaps among my last — that none
E'er valued more thy virtues, though he knew not
To profit by them…

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

George Gordon Byron

“There is no instinct like that of the heart.”

George Gordon Byron

“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)

“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!”

George Gordon Byron

The Island (1823), Canto II, Stanza 19.

“She walks the waters like a thing of life,
And seems to dare the elements to strife.”

George Gordon Byron

Canto I, stanza 3.
The Corsair (1814)

“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.”

George Gordon Byron book Hebrew Melodies

The Destruction of Sennacherib http://englishhistory.net/byron/poems/destruct.html, st. 1. <br class="br">Hebrew Melodies (1815)

“There be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me.”

George Gordon Byron

Stanzas for Music http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-StanzM-beautysd.htm, st. 1 (1816).

“There 's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away.”

George Gordon Byron

Stanzas for Music (March 1815), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!”

George Gordon Byron book Hebrew Melodies

The Destruction of Sennacherib, st. 6.
Hebrew Melodies (1815)

“To be thus—
Grey-hair'd with anguish, like these blasted pines,
Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless,
A blighted trunk upon a cursed root,
Which but supplies a feeling to decay—
And to be thus, eternally but thus,
Having been otherwise! Now furrow'd o'er
With wrinkles, plough'd by moments, not by years
And hours—all tortured into ages—hours
Which I outlive!—Ye toppling crags of ice!
Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down
In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me!
I hear ye momently above, beneath,
Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass,
And only fall on things that still would live.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act I, scene ii.
Manfred (1817)

“I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,
That not a single accent seems uncouth,
Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural,
Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.”

George Gordon Byron

Stanza 44.
Beppo (1818)