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Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes - Page 6

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The psychological and moral comfort of a presence at once humble and understanding-this is the greatest benefit that the dog has bestowed upon man.

The psychological and moral comfort of a presence at once humble and understanding-this is the greatest benefit that the dog has bestowed upon man.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Friendship, Dog, Humble

Just a tender sense of my own process, that holds something of my connection with the divine.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Connections, Divinity, Divine

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being. Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Autumn, Wind, Unseen
'Ode to the West Wind' (1819) l. 1

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; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Forgiveness, Night, Thinking
"The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley".

I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields; Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. You with the unpaid bill, Despair, You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, I will pay you in the grave, Death will listen to your stave.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Sweet, Reflection, Yield
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley; Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments”, p.307

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the Year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. . . .

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

The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath of God and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Loss, Wrath, Evil
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.158

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light, Imagination! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Love Is, Arrows
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1840). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.282

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Men, Speech, Universe
'Prometheus Unbound' (1820) act 2, scene 4, l. 73

Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Nature, Punishment, Faults

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
Dream, Sleep, Men
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1701, Delphi Classics

Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Meditation, Sage, Calm
'Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples' (1818)

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Beautiful, Mirrors, Poetry
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.33

Whence are we, and why are we? Of what scene The actors or spectators?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Actors, Scene, Spectators
'Adonais' (1821) st. 21

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Inspirational, Life, Time
'Adonais' (1821) st. 52

I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend — perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Marriage, Wise, Home
'Epipsychidion' (1821) l. 149

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Thinking, Tree, Infinity
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2004). “The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.875, JHU Press

It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Atheist, Creating, Religion
Percy Bysshe Shelley, G. Cuningham (1860). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: With Notes”, p.119

The howl of self-interest is loud ... but the heart is black which throbs solely to its note.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Heart, Self, Black
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1926). “The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Notes on Shelley's correspondents. Letters, 1803 to 1812”

I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Laughter, Rain, Clouds
1819 'The Cloud'.

What is Love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love, Powerful, Attraction
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1817, Delphi Classics

In proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the community of property and power. Among true and real friends, all is common; and, were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friends. The only perfect and genuine republic is that which comprehends every living being. Those distinctions which have been artificially set up, of nations, societies, families, and religions, are only general names, expressing the abhorrence and contempt with which men blindly consider their fellowmen.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Real, Ignorance
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1988). “Shelley's Prose: Or the Trumpet of a Prophecy”

No mistake is more to be deplored than the conception that a system of morals and religion should derive any portion of its authority either from the circumstance of its novelty or its antiquity, that it should be judged excellent, not because it is reasonable or true, but because no person has ever thought of it before, or because it has been thought of from the beginning of time.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mistake, Novelty, Moral
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1988). “Shelley's Prose: Or the Trumpet of a Prophecy”

The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Weed, Dream, Winter
'Hellas' (1822) l. 1060

I stood within the city disinterred; And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls Of spirits passng through the streets; and heard the Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals Thrill through those roofless halls; The oracular thunder penetrating shook The listening soul in my suspended blood.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Light, Blood, Cities
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1853). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete in One Volume”, p.544

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