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Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes about Pain

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Joy, once lost, is pain

Joy, once lost, is pain

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Pain, Joy, Chaos
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Geoffrey Matthews, Kelvin Everest (1989). “The Poems of Shelley: 1817-1819”, p.711, Pearson Education

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

The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. 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 pleasure of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Beautiful, Pain, Men
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2006). “A Defence of Poetry: an Essay: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.15, ReadHowYouWant.com

I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

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

Love's very pain is sweet

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Sweet, Pain
Percy Bysshe Shelley, G. Cuningham (1856). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: With Notes”, p.344

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
Pain, Men, Imagine
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994). “The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley”, p.642, Wordsworth Editions

I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Pain, Writing, Names
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1862). “Relics of Shelley”, p.190

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Pain, Tragedy, Shadow
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2006). “A Defence of Poetry: an Essay: Easyread Large Edition”, p.57, ReadHowYouWant.com

He has outsoared the shadow of our night; envy and calumny and hate and pain, and that unrest which men miscall delight, can touch him not and torture not again; from the contagion of the world's slow stain, he is secure.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Death, Pain, Hate
'Adonais' (1821) st. 40

Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Pain, Expression, Sorrow
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2006). “A Defence of Poetry: an Essay: Easyread Large Edition”, p.57, ReadHowYouWant.com

That sweet sleep which medicines all pain.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Sweet, Pain, Sleep
Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.831, Delphi Classics

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

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

Forget the dead, the past? O yet there are ghosts that may take revenge for it, memories that make the heart a tomb, regrets which gild thro’ the spirit’s gloom, and with ghastly whispers tell that joy, once lost, is pain.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Revenge, Regret, Pain
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1829). “The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Complete in One Volume”, p.232

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