Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes (315 Quotes)


    You were ever still
    Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel,
    A wolf for the meek lambs--if you can't swim
    Beware of Providence.

    Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.

    Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

    On whose last steps I climb,
    Trembling at that where I had stood before;
    When will return the glory of your prime?

    Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful.



    Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
    Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!



    Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.

    His big tears, for he wept well, Turned to millstones as they fell. And the little children, who Round his feet played to and fro, Thinking every tear a gem Had their brains knocked out by them.

    Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, Yet let's be merry we'll have tea and toast Custards for supper, and an endless host Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, And other such ladylike luxuries

    The race
    Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
    Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
    And their place is not known.

    Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.

    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.

    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.


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


    In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
    Spread far around and inaccessibly
    Its circles?

    Massacre,
    For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,
    Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,
    And stifled thee, their minister.

    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.


    He eagerly pursues
    Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
    He overleaps the bounds.

    All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever. ...... They who inspire it most are fortunate, As I am now but those who feel it most Are happier still.

    Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

    Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,
    Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led
    Into the peace of his dominion cold.


    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.


    All wept--as I think both ye now would,
    If envy or age had not frozen your blood--
    At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

    Red morning dawned upon his flight,
    Shedding the mockery of its vital hues
    Upon his cheek of death.

    Too happy they, whose pleasure sought
    Extinguishes all sense and thought
    Of the regret that pleasure leaves,
    Destroying life alone, not peace!



    I speak in grief,
    Not exultation, for I hate no more,
    As then ere misery made me wise.

    This Lady never slept, but lay in trance
    All night within the fountain--as in sleep.

    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.


    Near them, on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

    Obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton

    The spirit of sweet human love has sent
    A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
    Her choicest gifts.


    The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers, Her touch was as electric poison.

    Have you not heard When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him.

    Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, And priests dare babble of a God of peace Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood.


    One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it.




    Related Authors


    Walt Whitman - T. S. Eliot - Shel Silverstein - Robert Frost - Emily Dickinson - Aeschylus - William Somerville - Jorge Luis Borges - Geoffrey Chaucer - Euripides


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