Book detail: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book provides an in-depth examination of the literary contributions and personal traits of the poet Lord Byron, as well as an exploration of the character Don Juan, examining the influences and inspirations behind both figures.
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“Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“That alliance may be said to have a double tie, where the minds are united as well as the body; and the union will have all its strength when both the links are in perfection together.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself, until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it; its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight and influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon of common minds.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who cannot help themselves.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“He that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth, will come to all other questions with a decided advantage over his opponents.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The wise man has his follies, no less than the fool; but it has been said that herein lies the difference--the follies of the fool are known to the world, but hidden from himself; the follies of the wise are known to himself, but hidden from the world.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“There is no quality of the mind, or of the body, that so instantaneously and irresistibly captivates, as wit. An elegant writer has observed that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. He that deserts the latter, and gives himself up entirely to the guidance of the former, will certainly fall into many pitfalls and quagmires, like him who walks by flashes of lightning, rather than the steady beams of the sun.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“From the preponderance of talent, we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth; but from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“When the air balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The doctor answered this question by asking another: "What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man."”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The pride of ancestry is a superstructure of the most imposing height, but resting on the most flimsy foundation. It is ridiculous enough to observe the hauteur with which the old nobility look down on the new. The reason of this puzzled me a little, until I began to reflect that most titles are respectable only because they are old; if new, they would be despised, because all those who now admire the grandeur of the stream would see nothing but the impurity of the source.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The truly great consider, first, how they may gain the approbation of God, and, secondly, that of their own conscience. Having done this, they would then willingly conciliate the good opinion of their fellow-men. But the truly little reverse the thing. The primary object with them is to secure the applause of their fellow-men; and having effected this, the approbation of God and their own conscience may follow on as they can.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Living authors, therefore, are usually, bad companions. If they have not gained character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen--for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith, who have never written half so well.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Very great personages are not likely to form very just estimates either of others or of themselves; their knowledge of themselves is obscured by the flattery of others; their knowledge of others is equally clouded by circumstances peculiar to themselves. For in the presence of the great, the modest are sure to suffer from too much diffidence, and the confident from too much display.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Fortune, like other females, prefers a lover to a master, and submits with impatience to control; but he that wooes her with opportunity and importunity will seldom court her in vain.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Natural good is' so intimately connected with moral good, and natural evil with moral evil, that I am as certain as if I heard a voice from heaven proclaim it, that God is on the side of virtue. He has learnt much, and has not lived in vain, who has practically discovered that most strict and necessary connection, that does and will ever exist between vice and misery, and virtue and happiness.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend; but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success; for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or flattery the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the third.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we most want, happens to be the only thing we never purchase--our coffin.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“If that marvellous microcosm, man, with all the costly cargo of his faculties and powers, were indeed a rich argosy, fitted out and freighted only for shipwreck and destruction, who amongst us that tolerate the present only from the hope of the future, who that have any aspirings of a high and intellectual nature about them, could be brought to submit to the disgusting mortifications of the voyage?”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quantum that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“That politeness which we put on, in order to keep the assuming and the presumptuous at a proper distance will generally succeed. But it sometimes happens that these obtrusive characters are on such excellent terms with themselves that they put down this very politeness to the score of their own great merits and high pretensions, meeting the coldness of our reserve with a ridiculous condescension of familiarity, in order to set us at ease with ourselves.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us than the powerful whom we have injured.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It has been said that men carry on a kind of coasting trade with religion. In the voyage of life, they profess to be in search of heaven, but take care not to venture so far in their approximations to it, as entirely to lose sight of the earth; and should their frail vessel be in danger of shipwreck, they will gladly throw their darling vices overboard, as other mariners their treasures, only to fish them up again when the storm is over.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Religion, like its votaries, while it exists on earth, must have a body as well as a soul. A religion purely spiritual might suit a being as pure, but men are compound animals; and the body too often lords it over the mind.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Some well-meaning Christians tremble for their salvation, because they have never gone through that valley of tears and of sorrow, which they have been taught to consider as an ordeal that must be passed through before they can arrive at regeneration. To satisfy such minds, it may be observed, that the slightest sorrow for sin is sufficient, if it produce amendment, and that the greatest is insufficient, if it do not.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand; with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Philosophers have widely differed as to the seat of the soul, and St. Paul has told us that out of the heart proceed murmurings; but there can be no doubt that the seat of perfect contentment is in the head, for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do; and judge of them from what they do, not from what they say. Hence they have one code of maxims for profession and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show and another for use.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It has been well observed that the tongue discovers the state of the mind no less than that of the body; but in either case, before the philosopher or the physician can judge, the patient must open his mouth.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do; therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that buys what he does not want, will soon want what he cannot buy.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“He that can please nobody is not so much to be pitied as he that nobody can please.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Early rising not only gives us more life in the same number of years, but adds, likewise, to their number; and not only enables us to enjoy more of existence in the same time, but increases also the measure.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it still deeper in debt to himself.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan