Lord Byron, formally George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron

Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.

Alas! They were so young, so beautiful, so lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour was that in which the heart is always full, and, having o'er itself no further power, prompts deeds eternity cannot annul.

All was prepared--the fire, the sword, the men To wield them in their terrible array. The army, like a lion from his den, March'd forth with nerves and sinews bent to slay-- A human Hydra, issuing from its fen To breathe destruction on its winding way, Whose heads were heroes, which cut off in vain, Immediately in others grew again.

And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, but, like a hawk encumbered with his hood, explaining metaphysics to the nation – I wish he would explain his explanation.

Sorrow is knowledge.

Adversity is the first path to truth.