Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

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'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
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
Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
O'er Egypt's land of memory floods are level, And they are thine, O Nile! and well thou knowest The soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil, And fruits, and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
No mistake is more to be deplored than the conception that a system of morals and religion should derive any portion of its authority either from the circumstance of its novelty or its antiquity, that it should be judged excellent, not because it is reasonable or true, but because no person has ever thought of it before, or because it has been thought of from the beginning of time.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something better than reason.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.

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

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

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley