Don Juan (Byron)

Don Juan (1818–1824) is a long, digressive satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womaniser but someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Unlike the more tortured early romantic works by Byron, exemplified by Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Don Juan has a more humorous, satirical bent. Modern critics generally consider it to be Byron's masterpiece. The poem was never completed upon Byron's death in 1824.

Quotes

Dedication

And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,—
Explaining metaphysics to the nation—
I wish he would explain his explanation.
- Stanza 2

Would he adore a sultan? he obey
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?
- Stanza 11

Canto I (1818)

I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one.
- Stanza 1

Brave men were living before Agamemnon.
- Stanza 5; compare: "Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona / Multi", Horace, Odes, iv, 9, 25

Most epic poets plunge "in medias res"
(Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road).
- Stanza 6

My way is to begin with the beginning.
- Stanza 7

In vitues nothing earthly could surpass her,
Save thine "incomparable oil," Macassar!
- Stanza 17

But — Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck'd you all?
- Stanza 22; see Matrimony

I loathe that low vice—curiosity.
- Stanza 23

A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,
And mischief-making monkey from his birth.
- Stanza 25; see Childhood

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.
- Stanza 40

She
Was married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three.
- Stanza 59

Her eye (I’m very fond of handsome eyes)
Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire
Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise
Flash’d an expression more of pride than ire,
And love than either; and there would arise
A something in them which was not desire,
But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul
Which struggled through and chasten’d down the whole.
- Stanza 60

Her glossy hair was cluster’d o’er a brow
Bright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth;
Her eyebrow’s shape was like th’ aerial bow,
Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth,
Mounting at times to a transparent glow,
As if her veins ran lightning.
- Stanza 61

She, in sooth,
Possess'd an air and grace by no means common:
Her stature tall — I hate a dumpy woman.
- Stanza 61; see Beauty

What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate's sultry.
- Stanza 63

Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it,
For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.
- Stanza 65

A quiet conscience makes one so serene!
- Stanza 83

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
- Stanza 83

He thought about himself, and the whole earth
Of man the wonderful, and of the stars,
And how the deuce they ever could have birth;
And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars,
How many miles the moon might have in girth,
Of air-balloons, and of the many bars
To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies;—
And then he thought of Donna Julia's eyes.
- Stanza 92

'Twas strange that one so young should thus concern
His brain about the action of the sky;
If you think 'twas philosophy that this did,
I can't help thinking puberty assisted.
- Stanza 93

A little still she strove, and much repented
And whispering 'I will ne'er consent' — consented.
- Stanza 117

'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark
Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw near home;
'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark
Our coming, and look brighter when we come.
- Stanza 123

Sweet is revenge — especially to women.
- Stanza 124

Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.
- Stanza 133

And truant husband should return, and say,
"My dear, I was the first who came away."
- Stanza 141

But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws
So much as when we call our old debts in
At sixty years, and draw the accompts of evil,
And find a deuced balance with the devil.
- Stanza 167

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence.
- Stanza 194

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.
- Stanza 196; see Influence

A panoramic view of hell's in training,
After the style of Virgil and of Homer,
So that my name of Epic's no misnomer.
- Stanza 200

My grandmother's review—the British.
- Stanza 209

In my hot youth, when George the Third was king.
- Stanza 212

So for a good old-gentlemanly vice
I think I must take up with avarice.
- Stanza 216; compare: "That disease / Of which all old men sicken,—avarice", Thomas Middleton, The Roaring Girl (1611), Act i, Scene 1

What is the end of fame? 'tis but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;
For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
And bards burn what they call their ‘midnight taper,’
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.
- Stanza 218

Canto II (1819)

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:
- Stanza 12; see Countries and Patriotism

At leaving even the most unpleasant people
And places, one keeps looking at the steeple.
- Stanza 14

There's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As rum and true religion.
- Stanza 34

'Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters.
- Stanza 49

A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.
- Stanza 53

But man is a carnivorous production,
And must have meals, at least one meal a day;
He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction,
But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey;
Although his anatomical construction
Bears vegetables, in a grumbling way,
Your labouring people think beyond all question,
Beef, veal, and mutton, better for digestion.
- Stanza 67; see Eating

If this be true, indeed,
Some Christians have a comfortable creed.
- Stanza 86

He could, perhaps, have pass'd the Hellespont,
As once (a feat on which ourselves we prided)
Leander, Mr. Ekenhead, and I did.
- Stanza 105

Like a lovely tree
She grew to womanhood, and between whiles
Rejected several suitors, just to learn
How to accept a better in his turn.
- Stanza 128

That Pasiphaë promoted breeding cattle,
To make the Cretans bloodier in battle.
For we all know that English people are
Fed upon beef—I won't say much of beer,
Because 'tis liquor only, and being far
From this my subject, has no business here;
We know, too, they are very fond of war,
A pleasure—like all pleasures—rather dear;
So were the Cretans—from which I infer
That beef and battles both were owing to her.
- Stanzas 155 and 156

That famish’d people must be slowly nurst,
And fed by spoonfuls, else they always burst.
- Stanza 158

All who joy would win
Must share it,—happiness was born a twin.
- Stanza 172

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda water the day after.
- Stanza 178

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.
- Stanza 179

They look'd up to the sky, whose floating glow
Spread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright;
They gazed upon the glittering sea below,
Whence the broad moon rose circling into sight;
They heard the wave's splash, and the wind so low,
And saw each other's dark eyes darting light
Into each other—and, beholding this,
Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss;
- Stanza 185

A long, long kiss,—a kiss of youth and love.
- Stanza 186

Alas! they were so young, so beautiful,
So lonely, loving, helpless.
- Stanza 192

And thus they form a group that's quite antique,
Half naked, loving, natural, and Greek.
- Stanza 194

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.
- Stanza 196

Alas, the love of women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing.
- Stanza 199

I hate inconstancy—I loathe, detest,
Abhor, condemn, abjure the mortal made
Of such quicksilver clay that in his breast
No permanent foundation can be laid.
- Stanza 209

Canto III (1821)

In her first passion woman loves her lover:
In all the others, all she loves is love.
- Stanza 3; compare: "Dans les premières passions les femmes aiment l'amant, et dans les autres elles aiment l'amour", Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 471

'Tis melancholy, and a fearful sign
Of human frailty, folly, also crime,
That love and marriage rarely can combine,
Although they both are born in the same clime;
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine—
A sad, sour, sober beverage—by time
Is sharpen'd from its high celestial flavour
Down to a very homely household savour.
- Stanza 5

Romances paint at full length people's wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages;
For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,
There's nothing wrong in a connubial kiss:
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?
- Stanza 8

All tragedies are finish'd by a death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage;
The future states of both are left to faith.
- Stanza 9

Wives in their husbands’ absences grow subtler,
And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.
- Stanza 22

Dreading that climax of all human ills,
The inflammation of his weekly bills.
- Stanza 35

He was the mildest-mannered man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat:
With such true breeding of a gentleman,
You never could divine his real thought.
- Stanza 41

Just as old age is creeping on apace,
And clouds come o’er the sunset of our day,
They kindly leave us, though not quite alone,
But in good company—the gout or stone.
- Stanza 59

But Shakespeare also says, 'tis very silly
"To gild refinèd gold, or paint the lily."
- Stanza 76

Even good men like to make the public stare.
- Stanza 81

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.
- The Isles of Greece, Stanza 1)

The mountains look on Marathon —
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream'd that Greece might still be free.
- The Isles of Greece, Stanza 3

A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set where were they?
- The Isles of Greece, Stanza 4

And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now —
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
- The Isles of Greece, Stanza 5

For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush—for Greece a tear.
- The Isles of Greece, Stanza 6

Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!
- The Isles of Greece, Stanza 7

Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
- The Isles of Greece, Stanza 9

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave —
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
- The Isles of Greece, Stanza 10; see Decay

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine —
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!
- The Isles of Greece, Stanza 16

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
- Stanza 88

Milton's the prince of poets—so we say;
A little heavy, but no less divine.
- Stanza 91

A drowsy frowzy poem, call'd the "Excursion",
Writ in a manner which is my aversion.
- Stanza 94

We learn from Horace, "Homer sometimes sleeps;"
We feel without him: Wordsworth sometimes wakes.
- Stanza 98

Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!
- Stanza 103

Ah, surely nothing dies but something mourns.
- Stanza 108

Canto IV (1821)

Nothing so difficult as a beginning
In poesy, unless perhaps the end;
For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning
The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend,
Like Lucifer when hurled from Heaven for sinning;
Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend,
Being Pride, which leads the mind to soar too far,
Till our own weakness shows us what we are.
But Time, which brings all beings to their level,
And sharp Adversity, will teach at last
Man, — and, as we would hope, — perhaps the Devil,
That neither of their intellects are vast:
While Youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel,
We know not this — the blood flows on too fast;
But as the torrent widens towards the Ocean,
We ponder deeply on each past emotion.
- Stanzas 1 and 2

Now my sere Fancy "falls into the yellow
Leaf," and Imagination droops her pinion,
And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.
- Stanza 3; compare: "My way of life / Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf", Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act v, Scene 3

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep.
- Stanza 4

Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land,
And trace it in this poem every line:
I don't pretend that I quite understand
My own meaning when I would be very fine;
But the fact is that I have nothing planned,
Unless it were to be a moment merry —
A novel word in my vocabulary.
- Stanza 5

The precious porcelain of human clay.
- Stanza 11; compare: "This is the porcelain clay of humankind", Dryden, Don Sebastian, Act i, Scene 1

Perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over may be meant to save.
- Stanza 12

'Whom the gods love die young,' was said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this.
- Stanza 12; compare: Menander, [Epigramatic] Sentences, 425 and The Double Deceiver, frag. 4; "The good die first, / And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust / Burn to the socket", William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book i

And her face so fair
Stirr'd with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air.
- Stanza 29; compare: "All her innocent thoughts / Like rose-leaves scatter'd", John Wilson, On the Death of a Child (1812)

It has a strange quick jar upon the ear,
That cocking of a pistol, when you know
A moment more will bring the sight to bear
Upon your person, twelve yards off, or so.
- Stanza 41; see Duelling and Challenge

Even to the delicacy of their hand
There was resemblance, such as true blood wears.
- Stanza 45

These two hated with a hate
Found only on the stage.
- Stanza 93

"Arcades ambo," id est—blackguards both.
- Stanza 93

With eyes that look’d into the very soul—
Bright—and as black and burning as a coal.
- Stanza 94

I've stood upon Achilles' tomb,
And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome.
- Stanza 101

Oh! "darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"
As someone somewhere sings about the sky.
- Stanza 110

Canto V (1821)

When amatory poets sing their loves
In liquid lines mellifluously bland,
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves,
They little think what mischief is in hand.
- Stanza 1

I have a passion for the name of "Mary",
For once it was a magic sound to me;
And still it half calls up the realms of fairy,
Where I beheld what never was to be.
- Stanza 4

There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in,
Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.
- Stanza 5

Men are the sport of circumstances, when
The circumstances seem the sport of men.
- Stanza 14

A lady in the case.
- Stanza 19

And one by one in turn, some grand mistake
Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake.
- Stanza 21; see Change

’Tis pleasant purchasing our fellow-creatures;
And all are to be sold, if you consider
Their passions, and are dext’rous; some by features
Are bought up, others by a warlike leader,
Some by a place—as tend their years or natures;
The most by ready cash—but all have prices,
From crowns to kicks, according to their vices.
- Stanza 27; see Bribery

And is this blood, then, form'd but to be shed?
Can every element our elements mar?
And air—earth—water—fire live—and we dead?
We, whose minds comprehend all things?
- Stanza 39

And nearer as they came, a genial savour
Of certain stews, and roast-meats, and pilaus,
Things which in hungry mortals’ eyes find favour.
- Stanza 47; see Cookery

And put himself upon his good behaviour.
- Stanza 47

Yet smelt roast-meat, beheld a huge fire shine,
And cooks in motion with their clean arms bared.
- Stanza 50

And gazed around them to the left and right
With the prophetic eye of appetite.
- Stanza 50

But every fool describes in these bright days
His wondrous journey to some foreign court,
And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise—
Death to his publisher, to him ’tis sport.
- Stanza 52

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.
- Stanza 65; see Luxury and William Plomer

No Method's more sure at moments to take hold
Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow
More tender, as we every day behold,
Than that all-softening, overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul — the dinner-bell.
- Stanza 49

"Not to admire is all the art I know
(Plain truth, dear Murray, needs few flowers of speech)
To make men happy, or to keep them so"
(So take it in the very words of Creech)—
Thus Horace wrote we all know long ago;
And thus Pope quotes the precept to re-teach
From his translation; but had none admired,
Would Pope have sung, or Horace been inspired?
- Stanza 100; compare: Pope, First Book of the Epistles of Horace, Ep. I, l. 1

Not to admire is all the art I know.
- Stanza 101

For through the South the custom still commands
The gentleman to kiss the lady’s hands.
- Stanza 105

There was no end unto the things she bought,
Nor to the trouble which her fancies caused;
Yet even her tyranny had such a grace,
The women pardon'd all except her face.
- Stanza 113

Why don't they knead two virtuous souls for life
Into that moral centaur, man and wife?
- Stanza 158

Canto VI (1823)

There is a tide in the affairs of women
Which, taken at the flood, leads—God knows where.
- Cf. "There is a tide in the affairs of men...", Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act iv, Scene 3

Heroic, stoic Cato, the sententious,
Who lent his lady to his friend Hortensius.
- Stanza 7

Polygamy may well be held in dread,
Not only as a sin, but as a bore:
Most wise men, with one moderate woman wed,
Will scarcely find philosophy for more.
- Stanza 12

A lady of "a certain age," which means
Certainly aged.
- Stanza 69

A "strange coincidence," to use a phrase
By which such things are settled nowadays.
- Stanza 78

Canto VII (1823)

But ne'ertheless I hope it is no crime
To laugh at all things — for I wish to know
What, after all, are all things — but a show?
- Stanza 2

"Let there be light! said God, and there was light!"
"Let there be blood!" says man, and there's a sea!
- Stanza 41

Canto VIII (1823)

The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.
- Stanza 3

Not so Leonidas and Washington,
Whose every battle-field is holy ground,
Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone.
- Stanza 5

"Carnage" (so Wordsworth tells you) "is God's daughter."
- Stanza 9

Thrice happy he whose name has been well spelt
In the despatch: I knew a man whose loss
Was printed Grove, although his name was Grose.
- Stanza 18

’Twas blow for blow, disputing inch by inch,
For one would not retreat, nor t’ other flinch.
- Stanza 77

The truly brave,
When they behold the brave oppress’d with odds,
Are touch’d with a desire to shield and save;—
A mixture of wild beasts and demigods
Are they—now furious as the sweeping wave,
Now moved with pity: even as sometimes nods
The rugged tree unto the summer wind,
Compassion breathes along the savage mind.
- Stanza 106

Canto IX (1823)

Oh, Wellington! (or "Villainton"—for Fame
Sounds the heroic syllables both ways.
- Stanza 1

Call'd "Saviour of the Nations"—not yet saved,
And "Europe's Liberator"—still enslaved.
- Stanza 5

Never had mortal man such opportunity,
Except Napoleon, or abused it more.
- Stanza 9

At least he pays no rent, and has best right
To be the first of what we used to call
'Gentlemen farmer' — a race worn out quite,
Since lately there have been no rents at all,
And 'gentlemen' are in a piteous plight,
And 'farmers' can't raise Ceres from her fall.
- Stanza 32

As fall the dews on quenchless sands,
Blood only serves to wash Ambition's hands!
- Stanza 59

What a strange thing is man! and what a stranger
Is woman!
- Stanza 64

Though modest, on his unembarrass'd brow
Nature had written "gentleman."
- Stanza 83

Canto X (1823)

When Newton saw an apple fall, he found
In that slight startle from his contemplation
A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round
In a most natural whirl, called "gravitation."
- Stanza 1

And wrinkles, the damned democrats, won't flatter.
- Stanza 24

O for a forty-parson power to chant
Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh for a hymn
Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt,
Not practise!
- Stanza 34

That water-land of Dutchmen and of ditches.
- Stanza 63

A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,
Dirty and dusky, 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!
- Stanza 82

Canto XI (1823)

When Bishop Berkeley said 'there was no matter,'
And proved it — 'twas no matter what he said.
- Stanza 1; compare: "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind", T. H. Key (once Head Master of University College School), reported by F. J. Furnivall

But Tom's no more—and so no more of Tom.
- Stanza 20

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but
The truth in masquerade.
- Stanza 37

Even I—albeit I'm sure I did not know it,
Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king—
Was reckon'd a considerable time,
The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.
- Stanza 55

But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
My Leipsic, and my Mount Saint Jean seems Cain.
- Stanza 56

John Keats, who was kill'd off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate.
'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.
- Stanza 60

Nought's permanent among the human race,
Except the Whigs not getting into place.
- Stanza 82

Be hypocritical, be cautious, be
Not what you seem, but always what you see.
- Stanza 86

Canto XII (1823)

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
- Stanza 6

Ready money is Aladdin's lamp.
- Stanza 12

"Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,"—"for love
Is heaven, and heaven is love."
- Stanza 13

And hold up to the sun my little taper.
- Stanza 21; see Authorship

And these vicissitudes tell best in youth;
For when they happen at a riper age,
People are apt to blame the Fates, forsooth,
And wonder Providence is not more sage.
Adversity is the first path to truth:
He who hath proved war, storm, or woman’s rage,
Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,
Hath won the experience which is deem’d so weighty.
- Stanza 50

For talk six times with the same single lady,
And you may get the wedding dresses ready.
- Stanza 59

Such is your cold coquette, who can’t say "No,"
And won’t say "Yes," and keeps you on and off-ing
On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow—
Then sees your heart wreck’d, with an inward scoffing.
- Stanza 63

Merely innocent flirtation,
Not quite adultery, but adulteration.
- Stanza 63

A Prince, ...
With fascination in his very bow.
- Stanza 84

A finish'd gentleman from top to toe.
- Stanza 84

Canto XIII (1823)

Beauteous, even where beauties most abound.
- Stanza 2

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
- Stanza 6

Of all tales 'tis the saddest,—and more sad,
Because it makes us smile.
- Stanza 9

Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away.
- Stanza 11

However, ’tis expedient to be wary:
Indifference certes don’t produce distress;
And rash enthusiasm in good society
Were nothing but a moral inebriety.
- Stanza 35

I hate to hunt down a tired metaphor.
- Stanza 36

The English winter — ending in July,
To recommence in August.
- Stanza 42

The mellow autumn came, and with it came
The promised party, to enjoy its sweets.
The corn is cut, the manor full of game;
The pointer ranges, and the sportsman beats
In russet jacket:—lynx-like is his aim;
Full grows his bag, and wonderful his feats.
Ah, nut-brown partridges! Ah, brilliant pheasants!
And ah, ye poachers!—’Tis no sport for peasants.
- Stanza 75

Society is now one polish'd horde,
Form'd of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.
- Stanza 95

All human history attests
That happiness for man—the hungry sinner!—
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.
- Stanza 99

All human history attests
That happiness for man — the hungry sinner! —
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.
- Stanza 99; compare: "For a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner", Piozzi, Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, p. 149

And such is victory, and such is Man!
At least nine tenths of what we call so; —God
May have another name for half we scan
As human beings, or his ways are odd."
- Stanza 104

Canto XIV (1823)

Death, so call’d, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass’d in sleep.
- Stanza 3

I for one venerate a petticoat.
- Stanza 26

He thought at heart like courtly Chesterfield,
Who, after a long chase o’er hills, dales, bushes,
And what not, though he rode beyond all price,
Ask’d next day, ‘If men ever hunted twice?’
- Stanza 35

He ne’er presumed to make an error clearer;—
In short, there never was a better hearer.
- Stanza 37

And then he danced;—all foreigners excel
The serious Angles in the eloquence
Of pantomime;—he danced, I say, right well,
With emphasis, and also with good sense—
A thing in footing indispensable;
He danced without theatrical pretence,
Not like a ballet-master in the van
Of his drill’d nymphs, but like a gentleman.
- Stanza 38

Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,
Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast,
Is that portentous phrase, "I told you so,"
Utter'd by friends, those prophets of the past,
Who, 'stead of saying what you now should do,
Own they foresaw that you would fall at last,
And solace your slight lapse 'gainst bonos mores,
With a long memorandum of old stories.
- Stanza 50

'Tis strange, — but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
- Stanza 101

Canto XV (1824)

All present life is but an interjection,
An "Oh!" or "Ah!" of joy or misery,
Or a "Ha! ha!" or "Bah!"—a yawn, or "Pooh!"
Of which perhaps the latter is most true.
- Stanza 1

The Devil hath not, in all his quiver's choice,
An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.
- Stanza 13

A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded,
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.
- Stanza 43

But if a writer should be quite consistent,
How could he possibly show things existent?
- Stanza 87

'Tis wonderful what fable will not do!
'Tis said it makes reality more bearable:
But what's reality? Who has its clue?
Philosophy? No: she too much rejects.
Religion? Yes; but which of all her sects?
- Stanza 89

Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
'Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge.
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be!
- Stanza 99

Canto XVI (1824)

The antique Persians taught three useful things —
To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth.
- Stanza 1; compare: Charles T. Davis

The worlds beyond this world's perplexing waste
Had more of her existence, for in her
There was a depth of feeling to embrace
Thoughts, boundless, deep, but silent too as space.
- Stanza 48

Not so her gracious, graceful, graceless Grace.
- Stanza 49

The loudest wit I e'er was deafen'd with.
- Stanza 81

Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest.
- Stanza 97; see Character

Canto XVII (1824)

But not to go too far, I hold it law,
That where their education, harsh or mild,
Trangresses the great bounds of love or awe,
The sufferers — be't in heart or intellect —
Whate'er the cause, are orphans in effect.
- Stanza 2

Great Galileo was debarr'd the Sun
Because he fix'd it; and, to stop his talking,
How Earth could round the solar orbit run,
Found his own legs embargo'd from mere walking:
The man was well-nigh dead, ere men begun
To think his skull had not some need of caulking;
But now, it seems, he's right — his notion just:
No doubt a consolation to his dust.
- Stanza 8

External links

Encyclopedic article on Don Juan (Byron) on Wikipedia
Works related to Don Juan (Byron, versions) on Wikisource
Media related to Don Juan (poem) on Wikimedia Commons