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Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes - Page 17

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My neighbour, or my servant, or my child, has done me an injury, and it is just that he should suffer an injury in return. Such is the doctrine which Jesus Christ summoned his whole resources of persuasion to oppose.

My neighbour, or my servant, or my child, has done me an injury, and it is just that he should suffer an injury in return. Such is the doctrine which Jesus Christ summoned his whole resources of persuasion to oppose.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Jesus, Children, Suffering
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.262

The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward. Not only Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Jesus, Philosophy, Example
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.269

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Differences, Imagination, Fantasy
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1845). “Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments”, p.1

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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love, Believe, Promise
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1823). “Queen Mab: a philosophical poem : with notes”, p.110

The nature of a narrow and malevolent spirit is so essentially incompatible with happiness as to render it inaccessible to the influences of the benignant God.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Spirit, Influence, Inaccessible
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.264

I have drunken deep of joy.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Joy
Percy Bysshe Shelley, G. Cuningham (1856). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: With Notes”, p.8

Know what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of Baptism; it is to believe in belief; it is to be so little that elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child had its fairy godmother in its soul.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Faith, Horse, Children

This is Heaven, when pain and evil cease, and when the Benignant Principle, untrammelled and uncontrolled, visits in the fulness of its power the universal frame of things.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Pain, Evil, Heaven
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.266

The thoughts which the word "God" suggests to the human mind are susceptible of as many variations as human minds themselves.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mind, Variation, Humans
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Homer, Euripides, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1929). “The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”

The advocates of literal interpretation have been the most efficacious enemies of those doctrines whose nature they profess to venerate.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Enemy, Doctrine, Interpretation
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1972). “Selected Essays on Atheism”, Ayer Company Pub

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 Baiæ'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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Summer, Dream, Sweet
'Ode to the West Wind' (1819) l. 29

You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Sea, Ebb And Flow, Depth
'Letter to Maria Gisborne' (1820) l. 193

No one has yet been found resolute enough in dogmatizing to deny that Nature made man equal; that society has destroyed this equality is a truth not more incontrovertible.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Equality, Men, Enough
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1965). “The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Letters, 1803-1818”

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Kissing, Long, Lasts
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821). “Adonais [ed. by H.B. Forman. Titlepage reprod. from the 1821 ed.].”, p.19

Sounds of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain awaken'd flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Rain, Flower, Sound
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1832). “The Beauties of Percy Bysshe Shelley ... Third Edition”, p.218

There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Patriotic, Eye, Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1818, Delphi Classics

When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield, That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, And call the sad work glory.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ambition, Two, Mad
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat (2004). “The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.211, JHU Press

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
Atheist, Enemy, Liberty
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.274

Senseless is the breast and cold Which relenting love would fold; Bloodless are the veins and chill Which the pulse of pain did fill; Every little living nerve That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortur'd lips and brow, Are like sapless leaflets now Frozen upon December's bough.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Pain, Pulse, Nerves

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Knives, Losing, Lost
'Letter to Maria Gisborne' (1820) l. 240 (on Thomas Love Peacock)

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Feelings, Thee, One Word
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2012). “Ode to the West Wind and Other Poems”, p.80, Courier Corporation

It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Compassion, Vegetarianism, Should Have
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir John Courtown Edward Shelley-Rolls (bart.), Roger Ingpen (1934). “Verse and prose from the manuscripts of Percy Bysshe Shelley”

The discussion of any subject is a right that you have brought into the world with your heart and tongue. Resign your heart's blood before you part with this inestimable privilege of man.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Heart, Men, Blood
1812 An Address to the Irish People.

The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and waste of aliment absolutely incapable of calculation

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Animal, Men, Delay
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821). “Queen Mab, a philosophical poem, with notes. [reputed to have been given by the author to W. Francis. Wanting the title-leaf, dedication and part of the last leaf].”, p.173

Let the advocate of animal food, force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror let him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Animal, Blood, Tears
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1839). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.86

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