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In hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.
Topic: Heaven
Source: Childe Harold (canto I, st. 20)
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But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And there hath been thy bane.
Topic: Hell
Source: Childe Harold (canto III, st. 42)
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Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!
Topic: Hell
Source: The Giaour (l. 748)
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The careful pilot of my proper woe.
Topic: Help
Source: Epistle to Augustana (no. 3, st. 3)
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I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one.
Topic: Heroes
Source: Don Juan (canto I, st. 1)
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What want these outlaws conquerors should have
But History's purchased page to call them great?
Topic: History
Source: Childe Harold (canto III, st. 48)
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And history with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page.
Topic: History
Source: Childe Harold (canto IV, st. 108)
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There were his young barbarians all at play
There was their Dacian mother--he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday.
Topic: Holidays
Source: Childe Harold (canto IV, st. 141)
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"Farewell!"
For in that word--that fatal word--howe'er
We promise--hope--believe--there breathes despair.
Topic: Hope
Source: Corsair (canto I, st. 15)
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Hope, withering, fled--and Mercy sighed farewell.
Topic: Hope
Source: Corsair (canto I, st. 9)
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Oh, for a forty-parson power to chant
Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh, for a hymn
Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt,
Not practise!
Topic: Hypocrisy
Source: Don Juan (canto X, st. 34)
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Be hypocritical, be cautious, be
Not what you seem but always what you see.
Topic: Hypocrisy
Source: Don Juan (canto XI, st. 86)
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My heart is feminine, nor can forget--
To all, except one image, madly blind;
So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole,
As vibrates my fond heart to my fix'd soul.
Topic: Influence
Source: Don Juan (canto I, st. 196)
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Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication:
Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk
The hopes of all men and of every nation;
Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk
Of life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:
But to return,--Get very drunk; and when
You wake with headache, you shall see what then.
Topic: Intemperance
Source: Don Juan (canto II, st. 179)
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Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it,
For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.
Topic: Jealousy
Source: Don Juan (canto I, st. 65)
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A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemn'd to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine.
Topic: Journalism
Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (l. 975)
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An infant when it gazes on a light,
A child the moment when it drains the breast,
A devotee when soars the Host in sight,
An Arab with a stranger for a guest,
A sailor when the prize has struck in fight,
A miser filling his most hoarded chest,
Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping
As they who watch o'er what they love while sleeping.
Topic: Joy
Source: Don Juan (canto III, st. 196)
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There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron),
Topic: Joy
Source: Stanzas for Music--There's not a joy, etc.
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Come, lay thy head upon my breast,
And I will kiss thee into rest.
Topic: Kisses
Source: The Bride of Abydos (canto I, st. 11)
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A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love.
Topic: Kisses
Source: Don Juan (canto II, st. 186)
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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.
Topic: Kisses
Source: The First Kill of Love (st. 7)
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The tree of knowledge is not that of life.
Topic: Knowledge
Source: Manfred (act I, sc. 1)
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Knowledge is not happiness, and science
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance.
Topic: Knowledge
Source: Manfred (act II, sc. 4)
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Such hath it been--shall be--beneath the sun
The many still must labour for the one.
Topic: Labor
Source: The Corsair (canto I, st. 8)
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And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep.
Topic: Laughter
Source: Don Juan (canto IV, st. 4)
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The law of heaven and earth is life for life.
Topic: Law
Source: The Curse of Minerva (st. 15)
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The languages, especially the dead,
The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,
The arts, at least all such as could be said
To be the most remote from common use,
In all these he was much and deeply read.
Topic: Learning
Source: Don Juan (canto I, st. 40)
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Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart--
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd--
To fetters and damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron),
Topic: Liberty
Source: Sonnet--Introductory to Prisoner of Chillon
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I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth.
Topic: Linguists
Source: Beppo (st. 44)
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But yet she listen'd--'tis enough--
Who listens once will listen twice;
Her heart, be sure, is not of ice,
And one refusal no rebuff.
Topic: Listening
Source: Mazeppa (st. 6)
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A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,
Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping
In sight, then lost amidst the forestry
Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping
On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy;
A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown
On a fool's head--and there is London Town.
Topic: London
Source: Don Juan (canto X, st. 82)
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Yon Sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
My native land--Good Night!
Topic: Love of Country
Source: Childe Harold (canto I, st. 13)
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Oh, Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
What Heaven hath done for this delicious land!
Topic: Love of Country
Source: Childe Harold (canto I, st. 15)
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I can't but say it is an awkward sight
To see one's native land receding through
The growing waters; it unmans one quite,
Especially when life is rather new.
Topic: Love of Country
Source: Don Juan (canto II, st. 12)
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Sofas 'twas half a sin to sit upon,
So costly were they; carpets, every stitch
Of workmanship so rare, they make you wish
You could glide o'er them like a golden fish.
Topic: Luxury
Source: Don Juan (canto V, st. 65)
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I tell him, if a clergyman, he lies!
If captains the remark, or critics, make,
Why they lie also--under a mistake.
Topic: Lying
Source: Don Juan
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And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but
The truth in masquerade.
Topic: Lying
Source: Don Juan (canto XI, st. 37)
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Maidens, like moths, are ever caught, by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.
Topic: Mammon
Source: Childe Harold (canto I, st. 9)
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Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,
And all, save the spirit of man, is divine?
Topic: Man
Source: The Bride of Abydos (canto I, st. 1)
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For talk six times with the same single lady,
And you may get the wedding dress ready.
Topic: Matrimony
Source: Don Juan (canto XII, st. 59)
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There was no great disparity of years,
Though much in temper; but they never clash'd,
They moved like stars united in their spheres,
Or like the Rhone by Leman's waters wash'd,
Where mingled and yet separate appears
The river from the lake, all bluely dash'd
Through the serene and placid glassy deep,
Which fain would lull its river-child to sleep.
Topic: Matrimony
Source: Don Juan (canto XIV, st. 87)
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This is the way that physicians mend or end us,
Secundum artem: but although we sneer
In health--when ill, we call them to attend us,
Without the least propensity to jeer.
Topic: Medicine
Source: Don Juan (canto X, st. 42)
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Yet how much less it were to gain,
Though thou hast left me free,
The loveliest things that still remain,
Than thus remember thee.
Topic: Memory
Source: And Thou art Dead as Young and Fair
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When Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter."
And proved it--'t was no matter what he said.
Topic: Mind
Source: Don Juan (canto XI, st. 1), an allusion to a dissertation by Berkeley on Mind and Matter found in no
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'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.
Topic: Mind
Source: Don Juan (canto XI, st. 60)
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How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests
Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins
(Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests
Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines,
But) of find unclipt gold, where dully rests
Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines,
Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp;--
Yes! ready money is Aladdin's lamp.
Topic: Money
Source: Don Juan (canto XII, st. 12)
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The devil's in the moon for mischief; they
Who call'd her chaste, methinks, began too soon
Their nomenclature; there is not a day,
The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
Sees half the business in a wicked way,
On which three single hours of moonshine smile--
And then she looks so modest all the while!
Topic: Moon
Source: Don Juan (canto I, st. 113)
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Rough Johnson, the great moralist.
Topic: Morality
Source: Don Juan (canto XIII, st. 7)
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Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains;
They crown'd him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow.
Topic: Mountains
Source: Manfred (act I, sc. 1, l. 62)
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Soprano, basso, even the contra-alto
Wished him five fathom under the Rialto.
Topic: Music
Source: Beppo (st. 32)
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