Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
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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.
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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?
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We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
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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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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.
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Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
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War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
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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 long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
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The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
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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.
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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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Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon - Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved Night - Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!
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Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
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That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon.
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I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.
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Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast; Custards for supper, and an endless host Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, And other such ladylike luxuries.
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Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
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Have you not heard When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him?
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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.
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I met Murder on the way - He had a mask like Castlereagh - Very smooth he looked, yet grim; Seven blood-hounds followed him.
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It doth repent me; words are quick and vain; Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
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Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.
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And he wore a kingly crown; And in his grasp a sceptre shone; On his brow this mark I saw - 'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'