Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

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The glaciers creep Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The thoughts which the word "God" suggests to the human mind are susceptible of as many variations as human minds themselves.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
We live and move and think; but we are not the creators of our own origin and existence. We are not the arbiters of every motion of our own complicated nature; we are not the masters of our own imaginations and moods of mental being.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The encomium of one incapable of flattery is indeed flattering.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
When you can discover where the fresh colors of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to himself.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect — resembles more or less its original — in proportion to the perfection of the mind on which it is impressed.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Heaven's utmost deep Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
There the sea I found Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The young moon has fed Her exhausted horn With the sunset's fire.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Persevere even though Hell and destruction should yawn beneath your feet.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Senseless is the breast and cold
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve
That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortur'd lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now
Frozen upon December's bough.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Where art thou, beloved To-morrow?
When young and old, and strong and weak,
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,
Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,--
In thy place--ah! well-a-day!
We find the thing we fled--To-day!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
And plants at whose name the verse feels loath, Fill'd the place with a monstrous undergrowth, Prickly and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, Livid, and starr'd with a lurid dew. And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould, Started like mist from the wet ground cold; Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead With a spirit of growth had been animated.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
As belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief;...

Percy Bysshe Shelley
When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield, That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, And call the sad work glory...

Percy Bysshe Shelley
No one has yet been found resolute enough in dogmatizing to deny that Nature made man equal; that society has destroyed this equality is a truth not more incontrovertible.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
In proportion as a man is selfish, so far has he receded from the motive which constitutes virtue.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The crime of inquiry is one which religion never has forgiven.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath of God and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
What hand would crush the silken-winged fly, The youngest of inconstant April's minions, Because it cannot climb the purest sky, Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions? Not thine.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
I know The past and thence I will essay to glean A warning for the future, so that man May profit by his errors, and derive Experience from his folly; For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being.

Percy Bysshe Shelley