Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
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Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
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Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me! Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene The actors or spectators?
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You lie-under a mistake, For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.
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Be your strong and simple words Keen to wound as sharpened swords, And wide as targes let them be, With their shade to cover ye.
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Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
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Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
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Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs - To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another’s mind.
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… they who wore Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, Signs of thought's empire over thought -their lore Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might Could not repress the mystery within.
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A wild dissolving bliss Over my frame he breathed, approaching near, And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss.
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The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom; And all best things are thus confused to ill. Many are strong and rich, and would be just, But live among their suffering fellow-men As if none felt: they know not what they do.
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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.
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He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.
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The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.
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There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!
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Most musical of mourners, weep again!
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In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.
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Let the blue sky overhead, The green earth on which ye tread, All that must eternal be Witness the solemnity.
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Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number - Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many - they are few.
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The quick Dreams, The passion-winged Ministers of thought.
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Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
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History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
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Till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!
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Man, who wert once a despot and a slave, A dupe and a deceiver! a decay, A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.
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Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth!