Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

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If all the thought which had been expended on the construction of engines of agony and death - the modes of aggression and defence, the raising of armies, and the acquirement of those arts of tyranny and falsehood without which mixed multitudes could neither be led nor governed - had been employed to promote the true welfare and extend the real empire of man, how different would have been the present situation of human society!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you Hope to inherit in the grave below?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
It is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from generation to generation) that whole peoples adore the God of their fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and custom with them take the place of conviction or of proofs: they prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers taught them to prostrate themselves and pray: but why did their fathers fall on their knees?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Nature's most secret steps He like her shadow has pursued, where'er The red volcano overcanopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
The same means that have supported every other popular belief have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

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

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