excerpts from lord byron’s letters that read like tumblr posts from the 1800s
(diary version: https://www.tumblr.com/burningvelvet/708562718092836864/random-excerpts-from-lord-byrons-diaries-that)
“We of the craft (poets) are all crazy. Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.”
“Remember me to yourself when drunk. I am not worth a sober thought.”
“Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go, it is useless to inquire. In the midst of myriads of the living & the dead worlds — stars, systems, infinity — why should I be anxious about an atom?”
“I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.”
“I have imbibed such a love for money that I keep some sequins in a drawer to count, and cry over them once a week.”
“I do not believe in any religion. I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this life without speculating upon another.”
“Venice and I agree very well - in the mornings I study Armenian, and in the evenings I go out sometimes - and indulge in coition always.”
“The great object of life is sensation — to feel that we exist, even though in pain. It is this ‘craving void’ which drives us to gaming — to battle — to travel — to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description, whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”
“If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.”
“When I am ill or unlucky I philosophize as well as I can.”
“Cant is so much stronger than cunt.”
"I have such a detestation of cant ... that I make myself appear rather worse than better than I am."
“There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.”
“Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.”
“I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?”
“Why should Queens not be whores? every Whore is a Quean.” [Context: 1. Queen Caroline was being tried for adultery 2. “Quean” was another word for “prostitute”]
“But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.”
“To be perfectly original one should think much and read little, and this is impossible, for one must have read before one has learnt to think.”
“I doubt sometimes whether a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me - yet I sometimes long for it.”
“I think the worst woman that ever existed would have made a man of very passable reputation. They are all better than us, and their faults such as they are must originate with ourselves.”
“I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.”
“Hate is by far the greatest pleasure; men love in haste, but detest in leisure.”
“Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk.”
“In the last two years I have been at Venice, I have spent about five thousand pounds, and I need not have spent a third of this, had it not been that I have a passion for women which is expensive in its variety every where, but less so in Venice than in other cities.”
“I am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long, – I am such a strange mélange of good and evil, that it would be difficult to describe me.”
[on a lover, Margarita Cogni] “I forgot to mention that she was very devout, and would cross herself if she heard the prayer-time strike — sometimes when that ceremony did not appear to be much in unison with what she was then about.”
[on his future wife] “I am quite irresolute — and undecided — if I were sure of myself (not of her) I would go — but I am not — & never can be — and what is still worse I have no judgement — & less common sense than an infant — this is not affected humility…”
“I was the fashion when she first came out; I had the character of being a great rake, and was a great dandy — both of which young ladies like. She married me from vanity, and the hope of reforming and fixing me.”
“I read ‘Glenarvon,’ too, by Caro Lamb — God damn!”
"I have seen three men's heads and a child's foreskin cut off in Italy.”
“What could I do? – a foolish girl – in spite of all I could say or do – would come after me... I could not exactly play the Stoic with a woman who had scrambled 800 miles to unphilosophize me.”
“I have fallen in love, which, next to falling into the canal (which would be of no use, as I can swim), is the best or the worst thing I could do.”
(on the possibility of spies being sent for him during the Greek Revolution) “If these Gentlemen have any undue interest and discover my weak side — viz — a propensity to be governed — and were to set a pretty woman or a clever woman about me — with a turn for political or any other sort of intrigue — why — they would make a fool of me — no very difficult matter probably even without such an intervention. But if I can keep passion — at least that passion — out of the question (which may be the more easy as I left my heart in Italy) they will not weather me with quite so much facility.”
[on a Venetian lover, Marianna Segatti] “I am sure if I put a poniard into the hand of this one, she would plunge it where I told her, — and into me, if I offended her. I like this kind of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred Medea to any woman that ever breathed.”
[in response to a fan letter] “You tell me that you wished to know me better, because you liked my writing. I think you must be aware that a writer is in general very different from his productions, and always disappoints those who expect to find in him qualities more agreeable than those of others; I shall certainly not be lessened in my vanity, as a scribbler, by the reflection that a work of mine has given you pleasure; and, to preserve the impression in its favour, I will not risk your good opinion, by inflicting my acquaintance upon you.”
