Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
-
Peter was dull; he was at first Dull,-oh so dull, so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed, Still with this dulness was he cursed! Dull,-beyond all conception, dull.
-
Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets' food is love and fame.
-
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep- He hath awakened from the dream of life- 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings.
-
Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.
-
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 inquiry.
-
Peace is in the grave. The grave hides all things beautiful and good. I am a God and cannot find it there, Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge, This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
-
Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
-
The old laws of England - they Whose reverend heads with age are gray, Children of a wiser day; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo - Liberty!
-
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.
-
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.
-
Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.
-
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.
-
Me - who am as a nerve o'er which do creep The else unfelt oppressions of this earth, And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth, When all beside was cold: - that thou on me Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony!
-
… why God made irreconcilable Good and the means of good.
-
All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
-
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
-
As I lay asleep in Italy There came a voice from over the Sea, And with great power it forth led me To walk in the visions of Poesy.
-
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.
-
How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!
-
There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
-
The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
-
His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it.
-
He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see, what things they be; But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality!
-
Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven, Although on earth ’tis planted, Where its honours blow, While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven Which die the while they glow.