Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
True love in this differs from gold and clay, that to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, gazing on many truths.
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.
I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear.
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing. A tone Of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one.
Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on.
Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.
Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.
What is Love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves.
Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine, In one spirit meet and mingle-Why not I with thine?
Sow seed--but let no tyrant reap; Find wealth--let no imposter heap; Weave robes--let not the idle wear; Forge arms--in your defence to bear.
I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.
Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something better than reason.
The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other.
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!
It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.
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.
Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing.
And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade, All disguised, even to the eyes, Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.
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.
Among true and real friends, all is common; and were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friend.
Kings are like stars,-they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.
He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.
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.
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.
For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.
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!
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.
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.
