Percy Bysshe Shelley

Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude To live alone, an isolated thing?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove, A killing, withering weight.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven, Which die the while they glow.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Age cannot Love destroy, In which its vermeil splendours shine.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Here I swear, and as I break my oath may Infinity Eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge... Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon, to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again — I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on wh. we trample are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Once, early in the morning, He put on his Sunday clothes.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, Night followed, clad with stars.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The lone couch of his everlasting sleep.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Some say that gleams of a remoter world Of those who wake and live.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Yet now despair itself is mild, Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sun-girt City, thou hast been And thou soon must be his prey.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets' food is love and fame.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fame is love disguised.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The seed ye sow another reaps; The arms ye forge another bears.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nothing in the world is single, Why not I with thine?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The sunlight clasps the earth, If thou kiss not me?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I arise from dreams of thee And the stars are shining bright.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

O lift me from the grass! Where it will break at last!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hell is a city much like London — A populous and smoky city.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Teas, Where small talk dies in agonies.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Peter was dull; he was at first Dull,—beyond all conception, dull.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill Then it will be good night.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The breath Which is a mask without it.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, — Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

First our pleasures die — and then Dust claims dust — and we die too.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Have you not heard His best friends hear no more of him?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, And other such ladylike luxuries.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rough wind, the moanest loud Wail, for the world's wrong!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Death is here and death is there,

— 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

Music, when soft voices die, Love itself shall slumber on.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

One word is too often profaned For thee to disdain it.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The desire of the moth for the star, From the sphere of our sorrow.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Swiftly walk over the western wave, Swift be thy flight!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Death will come when thou art dead, Come soon, soon!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

There is no sport in hate where all the rage Is on one side.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

When the lamp is shattered Loved accents are soon forgot.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I have drunken deep of joy,

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, Two vipers tangled into one.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

What! alive, and so bold, O earth?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing Are one.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

You lie—under a mistake, Say what I think.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

No man has a right to disturb the public peace, by personally resisting the execution of a law however bad. He ought to acquiesce, using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason, to promote its repeal.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are men and brethren.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been, had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth, a libel on its possessor.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The king ...Between a king and virtue.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights With passion's unsubduable array.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Gold is a living god and rules in scorn, All earthly things but virtue.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

And man … no longer now And horribly devours his mangled flesh.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I arise from dreams of thee,

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 enquiry.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half the human race to misery.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Should ever a physician be born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he might trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge to sensation.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable system.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become agricultural: commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be so far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he loved his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Some philosophers—and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose... that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert with certainty that we do or do not live after death.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Should it be proved... that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist as soon as those parts change their position with regard to each other.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Then black despair, Over the world in which I moved alone.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

A wild dissolving bliss Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Can man be free if woman be a slave?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fear not the future, weep not for the past.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ere Babylon was dust, That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

It doth repent me; words are quick and vain; Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

In each human heart terror survives And yet they know not that they do not dare.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The good want power, but to weep barren tears. As if none felt: they know not what they do.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes; And yet I pity those they torture not.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Peace is in the grave. This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The dust of creeds outworn.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

On a poet's lips I slept In the sound his breathing kept.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

He will watch from dawn to gloom Nurslings of immortality!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

All love is sweet, Are happier still.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The pale stars are gone! As fawns flee the leopard.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave, Through the dim night of this immortal day.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

This is the day, which down the void abysm And folds over the world its healing wings.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, An empire o’er the disentangled doom.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love all waste Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is our will Should we be less in deed than in desire?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Me — who am as a nerve o'er which do creep Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

No more let life divide what death can join together.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Those who inflict must suffer, for they see Our chastisement or recompense.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Most wretched men They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thou dirge Vaulted with all thy congregated might.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

As I lay asleep in Italy To walk in the visions of Poesy.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met Murder on the way — Seven blood-hounds followed him.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

All were fat; and well they might He tossed them human hearts to chew.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

And many more Destructions played Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Last came Anarchy: he rode Like Death in the Apocalypse.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

And he wore a kingly crown; 'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

And with glorious triumph, they Of the wine of desolation.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

My father Time is weak and gray Fumbling with his palsied hands!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

What is Freedom? — ye can tell To an echo of your own.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias"

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold Shield'st alike the high and low.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

What if English toil and blood To dim, but not extinguish thee.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, Thine exceeding loveliness.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Let the blue sky overhead, Witness the solemnity.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

From the haunts of daily life Which sows the human heart with tares.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Be your strong and simple words With their shade to cover ye.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

O weep for Adonis - He is dead."

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Stand ye calm and resolute, Weapons of unvanquished war.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The old laws of England — they Thine own echo — Liberty!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rise like Lions after slumber Ye are many — they are few.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am the daughter of Earth and Water, I change, but I cannot die.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

For after the rain when with never a stain I arise and unbuild it again.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Higher still and higher And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

We look before and after, Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Teach me half the gladness The world should listen then — as I am listening now.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Life may change, but it may fly not; Love repulsed, — but it returneth!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The moon of Mahomet The cross leads generations on.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Let there be light! said Liberty, Athens arose!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The world's great age begins anew, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poor captive bird! Who, from thy narrow cage, Were they not deaf to all sweet melody.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I never thought before my death to see Youth's vision thus made perfect.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, Of its reverberated lightning.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love's very pain is sweet, Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

And bid them love each other and be blest: And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's.

— 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

I weep for Adonais — he is dead! Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Till the Future dares An echo and a light unto eternity!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Most musical of mourners, weep again!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

He died, Blind, old, and lonely.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

To that high Capital, where kingly Death He came.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The quick Dreams, The passion-winged Ministers of thought.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise! She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

And others came... Desires and Adorations, Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

From the great morning of the world when first God dawned on Chaos.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Alas! that all we loved of him should be, The actors or spectators?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame In sorrow.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift — The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

What softer voice is hushed over the dead? The heavy heart heaving without a moan?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; A portion of the Eternal.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— Invulnerable nothings.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

He has outsoared the shadow of our night; A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he; The spirit thou lamentest is not gone.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

He is made one with Nature: there is heard Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The One remains, the many change and pass; Until Death tramples it to fragments.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 'Tis since thou are fled away.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Let me set my mournful ditty Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sorrow (A Song)

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love tranquil solitude, The things I seek, not love them less.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love Love — though he has wings, Make once more my heart thy home.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Best and brightest, come away!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

And like a prophetess of May Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Away, away, from men and towns, An echo in another’s mind.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am gone into the fields Death will listen to your stave.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

… they who wore Could not repress the mystery within.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

… why God made irreconcilable Good and the means of good.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Then, what is Life?

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Death is here and death is there,

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river,

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.

— 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

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.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

You would not easily guess Attend the poor souls from their birth.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley