Tao Te Ching
Lord Byron
(George Gordon Byron)
1788 – 1824 CE
The first rock-star style celebrity
One of the best English poets, Greek national hero, first modern "rock-star" celebrity, revolutionary, politician, and major Romanticism influence; Lord Byron became renowned for a flamboyant bisexuality during a time when this was highly illegal. A major influence in the Romantic movement and close confidant of Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was known as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." During his lifetime considered the greatest poet in the world; his fame continues throughout the world in 36 different Byron Societies, in over 40 operas, in his poetry set to music by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz; and through the legacy of his daughter, a founding force in the first computer programming efforts.
Lineages
British Poets Politicians Romanticist
Eras
Western
Romantacism (1800 – 1850 CE)Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Unlisted Sources
Age OF Bronze
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1808-1817)
Darkness (1816)
Diary (1821)
Don Juan (1819)
The Corsair (1814)
The Prisoner of Chillon (1816)
Quotes by Lord Byron (29 quotes)
“When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past—
For years fleet away with the wings of the dove—
The dearest remembrance will still be the last,
Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.”
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“As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.”
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“If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.”
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“Yes — one — the first — the last — the best — The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeath'd the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one!”
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“My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me.”
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“My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears.”
from The Prisoner of Chillon (1816)
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“I had a dream, which was not all a dream...
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
Darkness had no need of air from them --- She was the Universe.”
from Darkness (1816)
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“A great poet belongs to no country; his works are public property, and his Memoirs the inheritance of the public.”
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“Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones,
Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones.”
from Age OF Bronze
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“Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,
Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven,
Or drawing from the no less kindled earth
Freedom and peace to that which boasts his birth”
from Age OF Bronze
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“No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe.”
from The Corsair (1814)
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“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.”
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“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”
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“Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.”
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“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”
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“Socrates and Jesus Christ were put to death publicly as blasphemers, and so have been and may be many who dare to oppose the most notorious abuses of the name of God and the mind of man.”
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“He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.”
from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1808-1817)
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“Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible;—he owes his celebrity, merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve”
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“What is a democracy?—an aristocracy of blackguards.”
from Diary (1821)
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“Let us have Wine and Women, Mirth and Laughter
Sermons and soda-water the day after.”
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“To fly from need not be to hate mankind. All are not fit with them to stir and toil. Nor is it discontent to keep the mind deep in its fountain.”
from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1808-1817)
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“[Virgil—] That harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow.”
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“'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; it hat no flatters; vanity can give no hollow aid; alone—man with his God must strive.”
from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1808-1817)
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“Yet, Freedom! yet the banner, torn but flying,
Streams like the thunderstorm against the wind!”
from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1808-1817)
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“Yet, Freedom! yet the banner, torn but flying,
Streams like the thunderstorm against the wind!”
from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1808-1817)
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“The drying up of a single tear has more
Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.”
from Don Juan (1819)
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“I am the very slave of circumstance
And impulse — borne away with every breath!”
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Quotes about Lord Byron (7 quotes)
“Not infrequently, noble-minded and ambitious men have to endure their harshest struggle in childhood, perhaps by having to assert their characters against a low-minded father, who is devoted to pretense and mendacity, or by living, like Lord Byron, in continual struggle with a childish and wrathful mother. If one has experienced such struggles, for the rest of his life he will never get over knowing who has been in reality his greatest and most dangerous enemy.”
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“Our Lord Byron — the fascinating — faulty — childish — philosophical being — daring the world — docile to a private circle — impetuous and indolent — gloomy and yet more gay than any other.”
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“My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me.”
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“It still saddens me that Lord Byron, who showed such impatience with the fickle public, wasn't aware of how well the Germans can understand him and how highly they esteem him. With us the moral and political tittle-tattle of the day falls away, leaving the man and the talent standing alone in all their brilliance.
”
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“Byron loved history—cleansed of nationalism and mythology—as the only truth about man... (Shelley ignored it, being wedded to an ideal uncomfortable with history). He made friends readily, for he was attractive in person and manners, fascinating in conversation, widely informed in literature and history, and more faithful to his friends than to his mistresses... Despite all his skeptical intelligence he succumbed again and again to the magnet that every healthy woman is to any healthy man.”
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“You speak of Lord Byron and me — there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees — I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.”
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“Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave... Whatever he does, he must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else; he lounges with extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader!”
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