Quotes from Percy Bysshe Shelley

Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, which shook, but fell not.

Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although

Asia: Who is the master of the slave? Demogorgon: If the abysm could vomit forth its secrets...But a voice is wanting, the deep truth is imageless; For what would it avail to bid thee gaze on the revolving world? What to bid speak Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these all things are subject but eternal Love.

Tell me, thou Star, whose wings of light Speed thee in thy fiery flight, In what cavern of the night Will thy pinions close now? Tell me, Moon, thou pale and gray Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, In what depth of night or day Seekest thou repose now? Weary Mind, who wanderest Like the world's rejected guest, Hast thou still some secret nest On tree or billow?

Yet if thou wilt, as 'tis destiny of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead, put forth thy might.

Grief returns with the revolving year. - Adonais

A sound of waves is heard.] "It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm. Peace, monster; I come now.

And death shall be the last embrace of her who takes the life she gave, even as a mother folding her child, says, 'Leave me not again.

It's not a merit to tolerate, but rather a crime to be intolerant.

Among the haunts of humankind, hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks, or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles, or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance, or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts hide that fair being whom we spirits call man.

Hate, disdain, or fear, self-love or self-contempt, on human brows no more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, 'All hope abandon ye who enter here.

For I loved all things with intense devotion;

His lips in truth-entangling lines which smiled he lie his tongue disdained to speak.

Soon, sweet madness was poured upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness

His lips in truth-entangling lines which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak.

the chariot's way Lay through the midst of an immense concave Radiant with million constellations, tinged With shades of infinite color, And semicircled with a belt Flashing incessant meteors.

I change, but I cannot die.

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Reading does not occupy me enough: the only relief I find springs from the composition of poetry, which necessitates contemplations that lift me above the stormy mist of sensations which are my habitual place of abode. I have lately been composing a poem on Keats; it is better than anything I have yet written and worthy both of him and of me.

Alas! this is not what I thought life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen. In mine own heart I saw as in a glass The hearts of others ... And when I went among my kind, with triple brass Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woeful mass!

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy?

The leprous corpse, touch'd by this spirit tender, Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath; Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour Is chang'd to fragrance, they illumine death And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath; Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consum'd before the sheath By sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows A moment, then is quench'd in a most cold repose.

Yet am I king over myself, and rule The torturing and conflicting throngs within. - Prometheus Unbound

Poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions.