Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
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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.
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I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields; - Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. - You with the unpaid bill, Despair, - You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, - I will pay you in the grave, - Death will listen to your stave.
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The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
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All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
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Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
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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.
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How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!
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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.
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Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day 'Tis since thou are fled away.
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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.
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Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.
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Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
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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.
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I never thought before my death to see Youth's vision thus made perfect.
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O lift me from the grass! I die! I faint! I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast: O press it to thine own again, Where it will break at last!
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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.
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Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.
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For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.
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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.
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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!
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O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
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Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep, - that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.
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What is Freedom? - ye can tell That which slavery is, too well - For its very name has grown To an echo of your own.
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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!