Date: 1816

"But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne, / Their admiration thy best weapon shone."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"[T]here is a fire / And motion of the Soul which will not dwell / In its own narrow being, but aspire / Beyond the fitting medium of desire; / And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"Conquerors and Kings, / Founders of sects and systems, to whom add / Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things / Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, / And are themselves the fools to those they fool."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"One breast laid open were a school / Which would unteach Mankind the lust to shine or rule:"

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"And there they [i.e., "chiefless castles"] stand, as stands a lofty mind, / Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd, / All tenantless, save to the crannying Wind, / Or holding dark communion with the Cloud."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields, / With emblems well devised by amorous pride, / Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"Nor is it discontent to keep the mind / Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil / In the hot throng, where we become the spoil / Of our infection"

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"[F]or his mind / Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose, / For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind, / 'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind. / But he was phrensied."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"[T]o conceal, / With a proud caution, love, or hate, or aught,-- / Passion or feeling, purpose, grief, or zeal,-- / Which is the tyrant Spirit of our thought, / Is a stern task of soul."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1816

"I stood / Among them, but not of them--in a shroud / Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, / Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)