George Gordon Byron

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), Sixth Lord, was an English poet, born in London, son of Captain Byron of the Guards, and Catherine Gordon of Gight, Aberdeenshire. He spent his boyhood at Aberdeen under his mother, now a widow, and was educated at Harrow and Cambridge, spending, when at the latter, his vacations in London, where his mother had taken a house. He wrote "Hours of Idleness," a poor first attempt, which called forth a severe criticism in the Edinburgh Review, and which he satirised in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and soon afterwards left England and spent two years in foreign travel.

Byron wrote first part of "Childe Harold," "awoke one morning and found himself famous". He produced the "Giaour," "Bride of Abydos," "Hebrew Melodies," and other work. In his school days he had fallen in love with Mary Chaworth, but she had not returned his affection, and in 1815 he married Miss Millbank, an heiress, who in a year left him never to return, when a storm raised against him on account of his private life drove him from England, and he never came back. On the Continent, moved from place to place, finished "Childe Harold," completed several short poems, and wrote "Don Juan". He threw himself into revolutionary movements in Italy and Greece, risked his all in the emancipation of the latter, and embarking in it, died at Missolonghi in a fit, at the age of 36. His poems, from the character of the passion that breathed in them, made a great impression on his age, but the like interest in them is happily now passing away, if not already past. The earth is looking green again once more, under the breath, it is believed, of a new spring-time, or anyhow, the promise of such. See "Organic Filaments" in "Sartor Resartus".

Wisdom & Quotes

• What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,

Is much more common where the climate's sultry.
- Don Juan

• Adversity is the first path to truth.

- Don Juan

• Good but rarely came from good advice.

- Don Juan

• Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;

Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
- Don Juan

• Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,

Sadder than owl songs or the midnight blast,
Is that portentous phrase, 'I told you so'.
- Don Juan

• Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,

'Tis woman's whole existence.
- Don Juan

• Ready money is Aladdin's lamp.

- Don Juan

• Pleasure's sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.

- Don Juan

• Polygamy may well be held in dread,

Not only as a sin but as a bore.
- Don Juan

• Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange;

Stranger than fiction.
- Don Juan

• In her first passion woman loves her lover,

In all the others, all she loves is love.
- Don Juan

• Alas! The love of women! It is known

To be a lovely and a fearful thing.
- Don Juan

• Now Barabbas was a publisher.

- traditional attribution

• 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.
- She Walks in Beauty

• There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is a society where non intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more.
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

• Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean - roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin - his control
Stops with the shore.
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

• 'Tis solitude should teach us how to die;

…alone - man with his God must strive.
- Child Harold's Pilgrimage

• 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 learned the language of another world.
- Manfred

• So, we'll go no more a roving

So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
- So, We'll Go No More a Roving

• Sleep hath its own world,

And a wide realm of wild reality.
- The Dream

Arthur Schopenhauer