Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. P
  4. Percy Bysshe Shelley
  5. Life

Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes about Life

All Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes Age Art Atheism Atheist Autumn Beauty Belief Birth Change Children Community Compassion Crime Criticism Death Earth Evil Fame Fate Feelings Genius Gold Grief Happiness Hate Heart Heaven Hope Ignorance Imagination Inspiration Jesus Joy Kissing Laughter Liberty Life quotes Love Lying Mankind Marriage Memories Moon Mountain Music Nature Obedience Pain Passion Past Peace Philosophy Pleasure Poetry Power Rain Religion Revenge Romantic Love Sadness Selfishness Sleep Solitude Sorrow Soul Spring Suffering Summer Time Truth Understanding Universe Virtue War Water Wealth Winter Wisdom Writing Youth
Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth!

Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth!

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love, Life, Change
1822 'Hellas', l.34-7.

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love, Life, Beautiful
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820). “Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts with Other Poems”, p.143

Love's very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Sweet, Pain
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1840). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.285

Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love, Life, Romantic
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820). “Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts with Other Poems”, p.146

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Fall, Clouds
"Ode to the West Wind" l. 53 (1819)

I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Pain, Compassion
1820 Prometheus Unbound, act 1, l.303-5.

All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love, Life, Sweet
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.114

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Poetry, World
A Defence of Poetry (written 1821) See Auden 22; Auden 39; Andrew Fletcher 1; Samuel Johnson 22; Twain 104

I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Rivers, Fields
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Geoffrey Matthews, Kelvin Everest (1989). “The Poems of Shelley: 1817-1819”, p.40, Pearson Education

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Death, Sleep
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Geoffrey Matthews, Kelvin Everest (1989). “The Poems of Shelley: 1817-1819”, p.592, Pearson Education

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. 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
Life, Rights, Circles
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1880). “Vindication of natural diet. Refutation of deism. Proposal for putting reform to the vote. Address to the people on the death of the Princess Charlotte. History of a six weeks' tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, etc. Journal at Geneva (including ghost stories) and on return to England, 1816. The assassins. On the punishment of death. On life. On love. On a future state. Speculations on morals. System of government by juries. Fragment on reform. On the revival of li”

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

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

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

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”

I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Children, Lying
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.227

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

Love's Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Dog, War
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, with Other Poems”, Cambridge University Press

I love Love - though he has wings, And like light can flee, But above all other things, Spirit, I love thee - Thou art love and life! Oh come, Make once more my heart thy home.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Art, Home
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.294

And bid them love each other and be blest: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, - for I am Love's.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Guests, Love Each Other
Percy Bysshe Shelley, G. Cuningham (1860). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: With Notes”, p.344

Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs And folds over the world its healing wings.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Wise, Spring
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1855). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: In Three Volumes”, p.441

The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Life, Views, Facts
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1820, Delphi Classics

You May Also Like: