Quotes from Percy Bysshe Shelley

When the storm-cloud that lowers o'er the daybeam is gone, Unchanged, unextinguished its life-spring will shine; When Erin has ceased with their memory to groan, She will smile through the tears of revival on thine.

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

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.

War, waged from whatever motive, extinguishes the sentiment of reason and justice in the mind.

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.

Can man be free if women be a slave?

A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There

Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food.

Cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.

But my soul, From sight and sense of the polluting woe Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven.

I am the eye with which the Universe Beholds itself and knows it is divine.

Calm as a slumbering babe, Tremendous Ocean lay. The mirror of its stillness showed The pale and waning stars

Seest thou the sunbeam's yellow glow, That robes with liquid streams of light; Yon distant Mountain's craggy brow. And show the rocks so fair, - so bright - (Song. Hope.)

Far, far below the chariot's path, Calm as a slumbering babe, Tremendous Ocean lay. The mirror of its stillness showed The pale and waning stars, The chariot's fiery track, And the gray light of morn Tinging those fleecy clouds That canopied the dawn.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race.

I think one is always in love with something or other; the error—and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it—consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes.

Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world

One too like thee: tameles, and Swift, and proud.

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may last! ? Percy Bysshe Shelley, from "Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats," Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc . (1821)

Yes! all is past — swift time has fled away, Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind; How long will horror nerve this frame of clay? I'm dead, and lingers yet my soul behind.

Look on yonder earth: The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, harmony and love. The universe, In Nature's silent eloquence, declares That all fulfil the works of love and joy, - All but the outcast, Man.

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