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Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes - Page 10

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Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this dim world That the pale name of priest might shrink and dwindle Into the Hell from which it first was furled.

Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this dim world That the pale name of priest might shrink and dwindle Into the Hell from which it first was furled.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Wise, Names, Mind

The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Song, Heaven
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats (1829). “The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats: Complete in One Volume”

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Change, Science
'Adonais' (1821) st. 52

Peace is in the grave.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Graves
'Prometheus Unbound' (1820) act 1, l. 638

There are two Italies.... The one is the most sublime and lovely contemplation that can be conceived by the imagination of man; the other is the most degraded, disgusting, and odious. What do you think? Young women of rank actually eat - you will never guess what - garlick! Our poor friend Lord Byron is quite corrupted by living among these people, and in fact, is going on in a way not worthy of him.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Food, Men, Thinking

At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God's own heart?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Atheist, Kings, Believe
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Roger Ingpen, Walter Edwin Peck (1965). “Complete Works: Newly Edited by Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck”

In the firm expectation that when London shall be a habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul and Westminster Abbey shall stand shapeless and nameless ruins in the midst of an unpeopled marsh, when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges and their historians.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Bridges, Broken, Expectations
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2008). “The Narrative Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.136, Wildside Press LLC

A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Beautiful, Spirit
'Adonais' (1821) st. 32

One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdain'd For thee to disdain it. One hope too like dispair For prudence to smother, I can give not what men call love: But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And heaven rejects not: The desire of the moth for the star, The devotion of something afar From the sphere of our sorrow?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Stars, Heart, Men
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To”

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Dream, Sweet, Feet
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1840). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.299

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Revenge, Idols, Age
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1908, Delphi Classics

Nought may endure but Mutability.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Change, May, Endure
'Ode to Naples' (1820) l. 1

I am not much of a hand at love songs, you see I mingle metaphysics with even this, but perhaps in this age of Philosophy that may be excused.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Song, Philosophy, Hands
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Donald H. Reiman, Michael O'Neill (1985). “Fair-copy Manuscripts of Shelley's Poems in European and American Libraries: Including Percy Bysshe Shelley's Holographs and Copies in the Hand of Mary W. Shelley, Located in the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Switzerland, as Well as the Holograph Draft of Keats's Robin Hood”, p.17, Taylor & Francis

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
Beauty, Forever, Secret
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.41

Let the blue sky overhead, The green earth on which ye tread, All that must eternal be Witness the solemnity.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Blue, Sky, Earth
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley; Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments”, p.234

We live and move and think; but we are not the creators of our own origin and existence. We are not the arbiters of every motion of our own complicated nature; we are not the masters of our own imaginations and moods of mental being.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Moving, Thinking, Imagination
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Geoffrey Matthews, Kelvin Everest (1989). “The Poems of Shelley: 1817-1819”, p.5, Pearson Education

The pale stars are gone! For the sun, their swift shepherd, To their folds them compelling, In the depths of the dawn, Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee Beyond his blue dwelling, As fawns flee the leopard.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Stars, Blue, Dwelling
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1326, Delphi Classics

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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love, Circles, Individual
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1980). “Shelley on Love: An Anthology”, p.82, Univ of California Press

Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Men, Soul And Body, Wings
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1822). “Queen Mab”, p.37

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Art, Law, Roots
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.166

It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Death, Creeds, Modest
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1845). “Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments”, p.8

So soon as this want or power [of love] is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love, Men, Want
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1980). “Shelley on Love: An Anthology”, p.73, Univ of California Press

Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect — resembles more or less its original — in proportion to the perfection of the mind on which it is impressed.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
God, Character, Perfect
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.270

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, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Sweet, Cheer, Men
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1908, Delphi Classics

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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Beautiful, Flower, Heart
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847). “The works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. by mrs. Shelley”, p.254

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