Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

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A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

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
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.

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
The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting on the cause.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on wh. we trample are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear, —
Swift be thy flight!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be
Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.

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 enquiry.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day,
Night followed, clad with stars.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ah! what a divine religion might be found out, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead of faith.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things, by a law divine,
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle —
Why not I with thine?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Should it be proved... that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The flood of time is rolling on;
We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone
To glide in peace down death's mysterious stream.
Have ye done well?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief.

Percy Bysshe Shelley