The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (88 page)
Read The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Online
Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
1692–1763
Christians, awake! Salute the happy morn,
Whereon the Saviour of the world was born.
Hymn (
c.
1750)
Strange! that such high dispute should be
'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
"On the Feuds between Handel and Bononcini" (1727)
God bless the King, I mean the Faith's Defender;
God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender;
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
God bless us all—that's quite another thing.
"To an Officer in the Army, Extempore, Intended to allay the Violence of Party-Spirit" (1773)
1788–1824
Year after year they voted cent per cent
Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions—why? for rent!
"The Age of Bronze" (1823) st. 14.
Did'st ever see a gondola?…
It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe.
Beppo
(1818) st. 19
In short, he was a perfect cavaliero,
And to his very valet seemed a hero.
Beppo
(1818) st. 33.
There was a sound of revelry by night.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 3, st. 21
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 3, st. 22
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.
of Edward Gibbon
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 3, st. 107
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs:
A palace and a prison on each hand.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 4, st. 1
Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul!
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 4, st. 78
Of its own beauty is the mind diseased.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 4, st. 122
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 4, st. 130
There
were his young barbarians all at play,
There
was their Dacian mother— he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 4, st. 141
While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Rome falls—the World.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 4, st. 145
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
(1812–18) canto 4, st. 178
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
(1812–18) canto 4, st. 179
The glory and the nothing of a name.
"Churchill's Grave" (1816)
There was a laughing devil in his sneer.
The Corsair
(1814) canto 1, st. 9
And she for him had given
Her all on earth, and more than all in heaven!
The Corsair
(1814) canto 3, st. 17
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.
"The Destruction of Sennacherib" (1815) st. 1
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed.
"The Destruction of Sennacherib" (1815) st. 3
And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But, like a hawk encumbered with his hood,
Explaining metaphysics to the nation—
I wish he would explain his explanation.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 1, dedication st. 2
What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate's sultry.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 1, st. 63
A little still she strove, and much repented,
And whispering "I will ne'er consent"—consented.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 1, st. 117
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 1, st. 194.
There's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As rum and true religion.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 2, st. 34
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 2, st. 178
And thus they form a group that's quite antique,
Half naked, loving, natural, and Greek.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 2, st. 194
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 3, st. 8
The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set!
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 3, st. 86 (1)
The mountains look on Marathon—
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 3, st. 86 (3)
We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps;
We feel without him: Wordsworth sometimes wakes.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 3, st. 98.
Now my sere fancy "falls into the yellow
Leaf," and imagination droops her pinion.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 4, st. 3.
…That all-softening, overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul—the dinner bell.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 5, st. 49
A lady of a "certain age", which means
Certainly aged.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 6, st. 69
Read your own hearts and Ireland's present story,
Then feed her famine fat with Wellesley's glory.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 8, st. 125
When Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter",
And proved it—'twas no matter what he said.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 11, st. 1
Merely innocent flirtation,
Not quite adultery, but adulteration.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 12, st. 63
Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 13, st. 4
The English winter—ending in July,
To recommence in August.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 13, st. 42
'Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
Don Juan
(1819–24) canto 14, st. 101
With just enough of learning to misquote.
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
(1809) l. 66
The petrifactions of a plodding brain.
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
(1809) l. 416
Friendship is Love without his wings!
"L'Amitié est l'amour sans ailes" (written 1806, published 1831)
So he has cut his throat at last!—He! Who?
The man who cut his country's long ago.
on Castlereagh's suicide,
c.
1822
"Epigram on Lord Castlereagh"
The Cincinnatus of the West.
of George Washington
"Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte" (1814) st. 19
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears.
The Prisoner of Chillon
(1816) st. 1
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 mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
"She Walks in Beauty" (1815) st. 1
Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art.
"Sonnet on Chillon" (1816)
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" (written 1817)
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.
"Stanzas Written on the Road between Florence and Pisa, November 1821"
Still I can't contradict, what so oft has been said,
"Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil."
"To Eliza" (1806)
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
With silence and tears.
"When we two parted" (1816)
Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of Man, without his vices.
"Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog" (1808)
My Princess of Parallelograms.
of his future wife Annabella Milbanke, a keen amateur mathematician; Byron explains: "Her proceedings are quite rectangular, or rather we are two parallel lines prolonged to infinity side by side but never to meet"
letter to Lady Melbourne, 18 October 1812
The place is very well and quiet and the children only scream in a low voice.
letter to Lady Melbourne, 21 September 1813
Pure invention is but the talent of a liar.
letter to John Murray from Venice, 2 April 1817
I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
on the instantaneous success of Childe Harold
Thomas Moore
Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
(1830) vol. 1
You should have a softer pillow than my heart.
to his wife, who had rested her head on his breast
E. C. Mayne (ed.)
The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron
(1929) ch. 11