Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Soul meets soul on lovers lips.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

No more let life divide what death can join together.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

~ 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

I have drunken deep of joy,And I will taste no other wine tonight.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

OzymandiasI met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich 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!'Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

I arise from dreams of thee,And a spirit in my feetHas led me- who knows how?To thy chamber-window, Sweet!

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breastRose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river,And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever,With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single;All things by a law divine In one another's being mingle:— Why not I with thine? See! the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea:— What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may last!

~ 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

I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within their own eternity.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,The path of its departure still is free.Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but Mutability!

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Yes! all is past—swift time has fled away,Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind;How long will horror nerve this frame of clay?I'm dead, and lingers yet my soul behind.Oh! powerful Fate, revoke thy deadly spell,And yet that may not ever, ever be,Heaven will not smile upon the work of Hell;Ah! no, for Heaven cannot smile on me;Fate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Venice, it's temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

There is eloquence in the tonguelesswind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of thereeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to somethingwithin the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathlessrapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, likethe enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one belovedsinging to you alone.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

...Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs— To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another’s mind. While the touch of Nature’s art Harmonizes heart to heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:— “I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields;...Awake! arise! And come away! To the wild woods and the plains, And the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green, and ivy dun Round stems that never kiss the sun: Where the lawns and pastures be, And the sandhills of the sea:— Where the melting hoar-frost wets The daisy-star that never sets, And wind-flowers, and violets, Which yet join not scent to hue, Crown the pale year weak and new; When the night is left behind In the deep east, dun and blind, And the blue noon is over us, And the multitudinous Billows murmur at our feet, Where the earth and ocean meet, And all things seem only one In the universal sun.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

We look before and after,And pine for what is not;Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

And I have fitted up some chambers thereLooking towards the golden Eastern air,And level with the living winds, which flowLike waves above the living waves below.—I have sent books and music there, and allThose instruments with which high spirits callThe future from its cradle, and the pastOut of its grave, and make the present lastIn thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,Folded within their own eternity.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sonnet: Political GreatnessNor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,History is but the shadow of their shame,Art veils her glass, or from the pageant startsAs to oblivion their blind millions fleet,Staining that Heaven with obscene imageryOf their own likeness. What are numbers knitBy force or custom? Man who man would be,Must rule the empire of himself; in itMust be supreme, establishing his throneOn vanquished will, quelling the anarchyOf hopes and fears, being himself alone.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

War is a kind of superstition, the pageantry of arms and badges corrupts the imagination of men.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

And in a mad tranceStrike with our spirit's knifeInvulnerable nothingsWe decayLike corpses in a charnelFear & GriefConvulse is & consume usDay by dayAnd cold hopes swarmLike worms withinOur living clay

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Joy, joy, joy!Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,And the future is dark, and the present is spread,Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 hostOf syllabubs and jellies and mincepies,And other such ladylike luxuries.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts 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? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley