Percy Bysshe Shelley famous quotes

When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Cat #Thinking #Care

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Sight #Preparation #Juice

History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Memories #Men #History

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Spring #Winter #Air

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#New Relationship #Essence #Liberty

The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Ignorance #Study

It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Atheist #Creating #Limits

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Love #Life #Beautiful

Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you Ye are many-they are few.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Sleep #Numbers #Slumber

I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, when the winds are breathing low, and the stars are shining bright.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Dream #Sexy #Sweet

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Pain #Men #Imagine

There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Creative #Deities #Spirit

There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Summer #Fall #Autumn

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Kings #Names #Despair

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Positive #Fear #Moving Forward

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

#Law #World #Why Not

Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Music #Memories #Voice

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Beautiful #Mirrors #Poetry

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Song #Musical #Sorrow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Sweet #Cheer #Creativity

I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Wine #Joy #Taste

First our pleasures die - and then our hopes, and then our fears - and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust - and we die too.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Dust #Debt #Firsts

The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within...could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the result; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline; and the most glorious poetry that has been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Inspiration #Greatness #Wind

For love and beauty and delight, there is no death nor change.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Delight

For there are deeds which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Compassion #Suffering #Deeds

If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, what doubts should we have concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Wise #Prayer #Doubt

I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Rain #Rivers #Water

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Lightning #Poetry Is

All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Poetry #Firsts #Acorns

There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Real #Men #Wealth

And Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Dream #Spring #Flower

All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Mistake #Self Improvement #Youth

I love snow, snow, and all the forms of radiant frost.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Snow #Frost #Form

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, - To the silent wilderness, Where the soul need not repress Its music.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Men #Soul #Woods

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Spring #Winter #Wind

Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Laurels #Faster

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Life #Poetry #World

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Imagination #Moral #Instruments

And on the pedestal these words appear:
 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
 The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Kings #Names #Despair

All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Life #Sweet #Love Is

Are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar?
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Notes

The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Sweet #Winter #Thinking

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Atheist #World

a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Sparks #May #Single Word

A dream has power to poison sleep.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Dream #Sleep #Poison

Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth!
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Life #May #Truth Is

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

#Thinking #Tree #Infinity

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Peace #War #Games

When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - in which case all comment is superfluous - or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Truth #Stupid #May

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Beauty #Poetry #World

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone. But grief returns with the revolving year.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Grief #Winter #Years

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep - he hath awakened from the dream of life - 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Dream #Peace #Sleep

If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Love #Family #Happiness

Let the advocate of animal food, force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror let him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Animal #Blood #Tears

If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Love #Children #Heart

The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Stars #Night #Sorrow

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore, and called it gold: before whose image bow the vulgar great, the vainly rich, the miserable proud, the mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, and with blind feelings reverence the power that grinds them to the dust of misery.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Kings #Dust #Shining

It is impossible that had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders that he could have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Power #Vegetables #Race

The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Nature #Shapes #Majestic

I wish no living thing to suffer pain.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Pain #Suffering #Wish

Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal. Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood by all, but which the wise, and great, and good interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Wise #Voice #Mountain

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

#Sunset #Night #Moon

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Night #Moon #White

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing. A tone Of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Music #Voice #Feelings

Man who man would be, must rule the empire of himself.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Men #Would Be #Empires

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Children #Rain #Laughing

Jesus Christ represented God as the principle of all good, the source of all happiness, the wise and benevolent Creator and Preserver of all living things. But the interpreters of his doctrines have confounded the good and the evil principle.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Wise #Jesus #Evil

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams....
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Dream #Flower #Sea

Far clouds of feathery gold, Shaded with deepest purple, gleam Like islands on a dark blue sea.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Dark #Blue #Sea

When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead — When the cloud is scattered The rainbow's glory is shed....
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Lying #Dust #Clouds

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air, The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Flower #Air #Glowing

Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Clouds #Snakes

Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay you low?
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Men #England #Lord

Rough wind, the moanest loud Grief too sad for song; Wild wind, when sullen cloud Knells all the night long; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods, whose branches strain, Deep caves and dreary main, Wail, for the world's wrong!
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Song #Grief #Night

Peace is in the grave. The grave hides all things beautiful and good. I am a God and cannot find it there, Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge, This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Beautiful #Kings #Revenge

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

#Marriage #Choices #Vices

Know ye what it is to be a child? It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Children #Believe #Water

It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise, we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek, But in our mind? and if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire?
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Dream #Love Is #Mind

The pale stars are gone! For the sun, their swift shepherd, To their folds them compelling, In the depths of the dawn, Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee Beyond his blue dwelling, As fawns flee the leopard.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Stars #Blue #Dwelling

I cannot endure the horror, the evil, which comes to self in solitude.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Self #Evil #Solitude

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

#Heart #Self #Black

I know the cause of all human disappointment -- worldly prejudice.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Disappointment #Causes #Prejudice

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

#Moon #Clouds #Light

February... Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kissed the forehead of the Earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, And breathed upon the frozen mountains...
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Sea #Heaven #Mountain

Love! dearest, sweetest power! how much are we indebted to thee! How much superior are even thy miseries to the pleasures which arise from other sources!
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Love #Misery #Pleasure

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

#Love #Powerful #Community

All things are sold: the very light of heaven is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love, the smallest and most despicable things that lurk in the abysses of the deep, all objects of our life, even life itself, and the poor pittance which the laws allow of liberty, the fellowship of man, those duties which his heart of human love should urge him to perform instinctively, are bought and sold as in a public mart of not disguising selfishness, that sets on each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Money #Heart #Men

I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Believe #Soul #Wish

The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose...
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Night #Clouds #Shadow

Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Song #Learning #Men

What do you think? Young women of rank eat - you will never guess what - garlick!
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Thinking #Garlic #Young

Till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Fate #Past #Light

Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Wall #Lying #Ocean

The psychological and moral comfort of a presence at once humble and understanding-this is the greatest benefit that the dog has bestowed upon man.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Friendship #Dog #Humble

Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Paradise #Exile

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Men #Genius #Pestilence

Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Wisdom #Found #Mankind

He hath awakened from the dream of life.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Dream #Memorial

Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness...and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Determination #Men #Wind

A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

#Beautiful #Spirit