All Quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray.”
“Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude To live alone, an isolated thing?”
“Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove, A killing, withering weight.”
“Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven, Which die the while they glow.”
“Age cannot Love destroy, In which its vermeil splendours shine.”
“Here I swear, and as I break my oath may Infinity Eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge... Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon, to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again — I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.”
“I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on wh. we trample are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.”
“Once, early in the morning, He put on his Sunday clothes.”
“Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, Night followed, clad with stars.”
“The lone couch of his everlasting sleep.”
“Some say that gleams of a remoter world Of those who wake and live.”
“Yet now despair itself is mild, Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.”
“And the Spring arose on the garden fair,”
“Sun-girt City, thou hast been And thou soon must be his prey.”
“Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.”
“Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets' food is love and fame.”
“Fame is love disguised.”
“Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low?”
“The seed ye sow another reaps; The arms ye forge another bears.”
“Nothing in the world is single, Why not I with thine?”
“The sunlight clasps the earth, If thou kiss not me?”
“I arise from dreams of thee And the stars are shining bright.”
“O lift me from the grass! Where it will break at last!”
“Hell is a city much like London — A populous and smoky city.”
“Teas, Where small talk dies in agonies.”
“Peter was dull; he was at first Dull,—beyond all conception, dull.”
“I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.”
“Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill Then it will be good night.”
“The breath Which is a mask without it.”
“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, — Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.”
“A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.”
“First our pleasures die — and then Dust claims dust — and we die too.”
“There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.”
“Have you not heard His best friends hear no more of him?”
“His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it.”
“Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, And other such ladylike luxuries.”
“A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.”
“Rough wind, the moanest loud Wail, for the world's wrong!”
“Death is here and death is there,”
“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”
“Music, when soft voices die, Love itself shall slumber on.”
“One word is too often profaned For thee to disdain it.”
“The desire of the moth for the star, From the sphere of our sorrow.”
“Swiftly walk over the western wave, Swift be thy flight!”
“Death will come when thou art dead, Come soon, soon!”
“There is no sport in hate where all the rage Is on one side.”
“When the lamp is shattered Loved accents are soon forgot.”
“I have drunken deep of joy,”
“Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life.”
“Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, Two vipers tangled into one.”
“That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon.”
“What! alive, and so bold, O earth?”
“Sing again, with your dear voice revealing Are one.”
“You lie—under a mistake, Say what I think.”
“There is no God! This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.”
“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
“GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.”
“No man has a right to disturb the public peace, by personally resisting the execution of a law however bad. He ought to acquiesce, using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason, to promote its repeal.”
“Man has no right to kill his brother, it is no excuse that he does so in uniform. He only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
“Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.”
“He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,”
“A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are men and brethren.”
“If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been, had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India!”
“Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth, a libel on its possessor.”
“How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!”
“The king ...Between a king and virtue.”
“War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.”
“Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights With passion's unsubduable array.”
“Gold is a living god and rules in scorn, All earthly things but virtue.”
“And man … no longer now And horribly devours his mangled flesh.”
“I arise from dreams of thee,”
“A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration.”
“Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow in both cases, excludes us from all enquiry.”
“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half the human race to misery.”
“It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.”
“It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.”
“Should ever a physician be born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he might trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge to sensation.”
“By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable system.”
“The spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become agricultural: commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be so far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he loved his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare.”
“Some philosophers—and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose... that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.”
“Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert with certainty that we do or do not live after death.”
“If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state.”
“Should it be proved... that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward.”
“It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist as soon as those parts change their position with regard to each other.”
“Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.”
“Then black despair, Over the world in which I moved alone.”
“A wild dissolving bliss Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss.”
“”
“Can man be free if woman be a slave?”
“With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.”
“Fear not the future, weep not for the past.”
“Ere Babylon was dust, That apparition, sole of men, he saw.”
“It doth repent me; words are quick and vain; Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.”
“In each human heart terror survives And yet they know not that they do not dare.”
“The good want power, but to weep barren tears. As if none felt: they know not what they do.”
“Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes; And yet I pity those they torture not.”
“Peace is in the grave. This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.”
“The dust of creeds outworn.”
“In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.”
“On a poet's lips I slept In the sound his breathing kept.”
“He will watch from dawn to gloom Nurslings of immortality!”
“To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign.”
“He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.”
“All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.”
“All love is sweet, Are happier still.”
“Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.”
“Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.”
“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass”
“The pale stars are gone! As fawns flee the leopard.”
“Familiar acts are beautiful through love.”
“Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”
“Man, who wert once a despot and a slave, Through the dim night of this immortal day.”
“This is the day, which down the void abysm And folds over the world its healing wings.”
“Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, An empire o’er the disentangled doom.”
“To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!”
“I love all waste Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.”
“It is our will Should we be less in deed than in desire?”
“Me — who am as a nerve o'er which do creep Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony!”
“No more let life divide what death can join together.”
“Those who inflict must suffer, for they see Our chastisement or recompense.”
“Most wretched men They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”
“Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!”
“Thou dirge Vaulted with all thy congregated might.”
“Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.”
“Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”
“Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!”
“Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
“As I lay asleep in Italy To walk in the visions of Poesy.”
“I met Murder on the way — Seven blood-hounds followed him.”
“All were fat; and well they might He tossed them human hearts to chew.”
“Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.”
“And many more Destructions played Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.”
“Last came Anarchy: he rode Like Death in the Apocalypse.”
“And he wore a kingly crown; 'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'”
“And with glorious triumph, they Of the wine of desolation.”
“My father Time is weak and gray Fumbling with his palsied hands!”
“When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”
“What is Freedom? — ye can tell To an echo of your own.”
“Ozymandias"”
“Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold Shield'st alike the high and low.”
“What if English toil and blood To dim, but not extinguish thee.”
“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.”
“Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, Thine exceeding loveliness.”
“Let the blue sky overhead, Witness the solemnity.”
“From the haunts of daily life Which sows the human heart with tares.”
“Be your strong and simple words With their shade to cover ye.”
“O weep for Adonis - He is dead."”
“Stand ye calm and resolute, Weapons of unvanquished war.”
“The old laws of England — they Thine own echo — Liberty!”
“Rise like Lions after slumber Ye are many — they are few.”
“I am the daughter of Earth and Water, I change, but I cannot die.”
“Familiar acts are beautiful through love.”
“For after the rain when with never a stain I arise and unbuild it again.”
“Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.”
“Higher still and higher And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.”
“Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.”
“Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.”
“”
“We look before and after, Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”
“Teach me half the gladness The world should listen then — as I am listening now.”
“We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.”
“Life may change, but it may fly not; Love repulsed, — but it returneth!”
“Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.”
“The moon of Mahomet The cross leads generations on.”
“Let there be light! said Liberty, Athens arose!”
“The world's great age begins anew, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.”
“The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!”
“My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few And bid them own that thou art beautiful.”
“Poor captive bird! Who, from thy narrow cage, Were they not deaf to all sweet melody.”
“I never thought before my death to see Youth's vision thus made perfect.”
“True Love in this differs from gold and clay, Of its reverberated lightning.”
“Love's very pain is sweet, Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.”
“And bid them love each other and be blest: And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's.”
“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”
“I weep for Adonais — he is dead! Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!”
“Till the Future dares An echo and a light unto eternity!”
“Most musical of mourners, weep again!”
“He died, Blind, old, and lonely.”
“To that high Capital, where kingly Death He came.”
“The quick Dreams, The passion-winged Ministers of thought.”
“”
“Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise! She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.”
“And others came... Desires and Adorations, Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.”
“Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year.”
“From the great morning of the world when first God dawned on Chaos.”
“The intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.”
“Alas! that all we loved of him should be, The actors or spectators?”
“As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.”
“The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame In sorrow.”
“A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift — The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.”
“What softer voice is hushed over the dead? The heavy heart heaving without a moan?”
“He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; A portion of the Eternal.”
“Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— Invulnerable nothings.”
“He has outsoared the shadow of our night; A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.”
“He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he; The spirit thou lamentest is not gone.”
“He is made one with Nature: there is heard Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird.”
“He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely.”
“The One remains, the many change and pass; Until Death tramples it to fragments.”
“The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.”
“Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 'Tis since thou are fled away.”
“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”
“Let me set my mournful ditty Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.”
“Sorrow (A Song)”
“I love tranquil solitude, The things I seek, not love them less.”
“I love Love — though he has wings, Make once more my heart thy home.”
“Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.”
“The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.”
“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”
“Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.”
“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”
“Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.”
“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”
“A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.”
“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
“Best and brightest, come away!”
“And like a prophetess of May Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.”
“Away, away, from men and towns, An echo in another’s mind.”
“I am gone into the fields Death will listen to your stave.”
“… they who wore Could not repress the mystery within.”
“… why God made irreconcilable Good and the means of good.”
“Then, what is Life?”
“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”
“Death is here and death is there,”
“The fountains mingle with the river,”
“Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.”
“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”
“Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.”
“The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”
“Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.”
“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.”
“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.”
“You would not easily guess Attend the poor souls from their birth.”