Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
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.
It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments by medicine, than to prevent them by regimen
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.
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.
Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker.
Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age.
A sensitive plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan like leaves to the light, and closed them beneath the kisses of night.
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
O cease! must hate and death return, Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found.
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.
When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead - When the cloud is scattered The rainbow's glory is shed.
January gray is here, like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, march with grief doth howl and rave, and April weeps -- but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers.
Sometimes it's better to put love into hugs than to put it into words. Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
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.
The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
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.
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.
The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarcely capable of cure.
All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
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.
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.
Peter was dull; he was at first Dull; - Oh, so dull - so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed - Still with his dulness was he cursed - Dull -beyond all conception - dull.
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
The breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it.
Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.
Let the blue sky overhead, The green earth on which ye tread, All that must eternal be Witness the solemnity.
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.
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.
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
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.