Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

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The howl of self-interest is loud... but the heart is black which throbs solely to its note.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; Radiance and odour are not its dower; It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full, It desires what it has not, the beautiful.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
If certain Critics were as clearsighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their writings!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
'tis He, arrayed In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon....

Percy Bysshe Shelley
How beautiful is sunset when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Our Adonais has drunk poisonoh! What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
I am not much of a hand at love songs, you see I mingle metaphysics with even this, but perhaps in this age of Philosophy that may be excused.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
And nearer to the river's trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white; And starry river buds among the sedge; And floating water-lilies broad and bright.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world
That the pale name of priest might shrink and dwindle
Into the Hell from which it first was furled.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
To hearts which near each other move From evening close to morning light,The night is good; because, my love,They never say good-night.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The nature of a narrow and malevolent spirit is so essentially incompatible with happiness as to render it inaccessible to the influences of the benignant God.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God's own heart?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music so delicate, soft and intense, It was felt like an odour within the sense.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Yes, marriage is hateful, detestable. A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequited fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Nile shall pursue his changeless way: Those Pyramids shall fall; Yea! Not a stone shall stand to tell The spot where on they stood. Their very site shall be forgotten, As is their builder's name.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
This, and no other, is justice: — to consider, under all the circumstances and consequences of a particular case, how the greatest quantity and purest quality of happiness will ensue from any action... there is no other justice.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
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
I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The curtain of the Universe is rent and shattered, The splendor-winged worlds disperse like wild doves scattered.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mild is the slow necessity of death;
The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Resigned in peace to the necessity;
Calm as a voyager to some distant land,
And full of wonder, full of hope as he.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
This is Heaven, when pain and evil cease, and when the Benignant Principle, untrammelled and uncontrolled, visits in the fulness of its power the universal frame of things.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The practice of utter sincerity towards other men would avail to no good end, if they were incapable of practising it towards their own minds. In fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
My neighbour, or my servant, or my child, has done me an injury, and it is just that he should suffer an injury in return. Such is the doctrine which Jesus Christ summoned his whole resources of persuasion to oppose.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind;
The foul cubs like their parents are.

Percy Bysshe Shelley