Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes (315 Quotes)

But I sate silent and alone,
Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed.

Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.

But I am chain'd to Time, and cannot thence depart!

His wan eyes
Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.

This isle and house are mine, and I have vow'd
Thee to be lady of the solitude.

There was no corn -- in the wide market-place all loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold They weighed it in small scales -- and many a face was fixed in eager horror then his gold the miser brought the tender maid, grown bold through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain.

Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not -- lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.

Monarchy is only the string that ties the robber's bundle.

Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof!

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.

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. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower -- and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams Beside a pumice isle in Bai's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Temple lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.

Peter was dull he was at first Dull,oh so dull, so very dull Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed, Still with this dulness was he cursed Dull,beyond all conception, dull.

But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest holiest tone
For one beloved Friend alone.

Peace, peace he is not dead, he doth not sleep He hath awaken from the dream of life.

He lives, he wakes -'tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.

Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
As silent lightning leaves the starless night!

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.

Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite To forgive wrongs darker than death or night To defy power which seems omnipotent To love, and bear to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates

There is no real wealth but the labor of man.

Hail to thee, blithe spirit Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art

Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.

Others I see whom these surround --
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure; --
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmur'd like a noontide bee,
'Shall I nestle near thy side?

What 'twas weak to do 'Tis weaker to lament, once being done

But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendor of its prime.

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

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.

We might be all
We dream of happy, high, majestical.

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.

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.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.

I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good: -
Between thee and me
What diff'rence?

Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

MY faint spirit was sitting in the light
Of thy looks, my love;
It panted for thee like the hind at noon
For the brooks, my love.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the Moon.

Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors.

The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?

The soul's joy lies in doing.

The world is weary of the past--
O might it die or rest at last!

My hopes were once like fire;
I loved, and I believed that life was love.

Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!

His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it.

The sunlight claps the earth And the moonbeams kiss the sea What are all these kissings worth If thou kiss not me