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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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill Which severs those it should unite; Let us remain together still, Then it will be good night.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, - Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, - mud from a muddy spring, - Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
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!
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
… why God made irreconcilable Good and the means of good.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise, we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek, But in our mind? and if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire?
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now - Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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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!
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night-wind sent Through strings of some still instrument, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley -
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
Percy Bysshe Shelley