Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, / ’Tis woman’s whole existence;
These words are written in a letter by the character Julia to Don Juan, not spoken by Byron as himself. Julia has been sent to a convent after her affair with Juan is discovered, and the letter is her farewell.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll! / Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
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:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, / Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.