Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes & Sayings

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

Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet, and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

True Love in this differs from gold and clay,/That to divide is not to take away. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings far aloft.
A seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman ... — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Love withers under constraints. Its very essence is liberty; it is comparable neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries are in confidence, equality and unreserve. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

By all that is sacred in our hope for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Perhaps the only comfort which remains
Is the unheeded clanking of my chains,
The which I make, and call it melody. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Here I swear, and as I break my oath may ... eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge ... Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon; to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again - I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

And bid them love each other and be blest:
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest, - for I am Love's. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

We know not what we do
When we speak words. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am the eye with which the Universe / Beholds itself, and knows it is divine. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The old laws of England they Whose reverend heads with age are gray, Children of a wiser day; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo Liberty! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

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

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Whatever may be his [man's] true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution (change and extinction). This is the character of all life and being - each is at once the centre and the circumference; the point to which all things are contained. - On Life — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
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

All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. 'The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am convinced that there can be no regeneration of mankind until laughter is put down. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the heights of love's rare universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

And the sunlight claps the earth,
And the moonbeam kiss the sea,
What is all these sweet work worth,
If thou kiss not me. — 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

Gold is a living god and rules in scorn, All earthly things but virtue. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes To multiply your lovely selves? — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Heaven's ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Lie bills and calculations much perplexed, With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint Traced over them in blue and yellow paint. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields; Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. You with the unpaid bill, Despair, You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, I will pay you in the grave, Death will listen to your stave. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

From the Greek of Moschus
Published with "Alastor", 1816.
Tan ala tan glaukan otan onemos atrema Balle - k.t.l.
When winds that move not its calm surface sweep
The azure sea, I love the land no more;
The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
Tempt my unquiet mind. - But when the roar
Of Ocean's gray abyss resounds, and foam
Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst,
I turn from the drear aspect to the home
Of Earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed,
When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody.
Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea,
Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot
Has chosen. - But I my languid limbs will fling
Beneath the plane, where the brook's murmuring
Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

As I lay asleep in Italy There came a voice from over the Sea, And with great power it forth led me To walk in the visions of Poesy. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

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

Sometimes it's better to put love into hugs than to put it into words. Soul meets soul on lovers' lips. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend, To cold oblivion. — 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

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

I'm...
like a poet hidden
In the light of thought
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The being called God ... bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. — 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

Seek far from noise and day some western cave, Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds A lulling murmur weave? - [_30 Ianthe] doth not sleep The dreamless sleep of death:-
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (2011-03-24). The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley - Complete (Kindle Locations 317-319). Kindle Edition. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips. — 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

Science, Poetry, and Thought Are thy lamps; they make the lot Of the dwellers in a cot So serene, they curse it not. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Less oft peace in Shelley's mind, Than calm in waters seen. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is true that the reluctance to abstain from animal food, in those who have been long accustomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of weak minds, as to be scarcely overcome; but this is far from bringing any argument in its favour — Percy Bysshe Shelley

O weep for Adonis - He is dead."
"Peace. He is not dead he doth not sleep - he hath wakened from the dream of life — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

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

All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. — 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

Know what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of Baptism; it is to believe in belief; it is to be so little that elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child had its fairy godmother in its soul. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

In friendships I had been most fortunate
Yet never saw I one whom I would call
More willingly my friend — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

And many an ante-natal tomb Where butterflies dream of the life to come. — 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

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow — Percy Bysshe Shelley

And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, and spies.
Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.
And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw -
I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past.
A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last,
Was Time long past.
There were sweet dreams in the night
Of Time long past:
And, was it sadness or delight,
Each day a shadow onward cast
Which made us wish it yet might last -
That Time long past — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain? — Percy Bysshe Shelley

A wild dissolving bliss
Over my frame he breathed, approaching near,
And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness
Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I have drunken deep of joy ... — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. - Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The jealous keys of truth's eternal doors. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poet's food is love and fame. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

birth but wakes the spirit to the sense Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape New modes of passion to its frame may lend; Life is its state of action, and the store Of all events is aggregated there That variegate the eternal universe; Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, That leads to azure isles and beaming skies And happy regions of eternal hope. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

There are two Italies ... The one is the most sublime and lovely contemplation that can be conceived by the imagination of man; the other is the most degraded, disgusting, and odious. What do you think? Young women of rank actually eat - you will never guess what - garlick! Our poor friend Lord Byron is quite corrupted by living among these people, and in fact, is going on in a way not worthy of him. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

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

This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Jealousy's eyes are green. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

I stood within the city disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passng through the streets;
and heard the Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls;
The oracular thunder penetrating shook
The listening soul in my suspended blood. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The soul's joy lies in doing. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Peace is in the grave. — Percy Bysshe Shelley