Quotes from Percy Bysshe Shelley

The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, So solemn, so serene, that man may be, But for such faith, with nature reconciled;

Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity. - Epipsychidion

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

Man would have been too happy, if, limiting himself to the visible objects which interested him, he had employed, to perfect his real sciences, his laws, his morals, his education, one-half the efforts he has put into his researches on the Divinity.

forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.

If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, a knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

Within the surface of the fleeting river The wrinkled image of the city lay, Immovably unquiet, and forever It trembles, but it never fades away;

silent those sweet lips, Once breathing eloquence That might have soothed a tiger's rage Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.

What are numbers knit By force or custom? Man who man would be, Must rule the empire of himself; in it Must be supreme, establishing his throne On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.

Beware, O Man - for knowledge must to thee, Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride

Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the streaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against it, and say 'Nature formed me for such work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent.

Man resembles no carnivorous animal.

On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and our only malady.

On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and our only malady: the term of our existence would be protracted; we should enjoy life, and no longer preclude others from the enjoyment of it; all sensational delights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect; the very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure, such as we now feel it in some few and favoured moments of our youth.

Frente a dos proposiciones diametralmente opuestas, el cerebro cree la menos incomprensible: es más fácil suponer que el universo ha existido por toda la eternidad que concebir a un ser eterno con la capacidad de crearlo.

As flowers beneath May's footstep waken, As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken, As waves arise when loud winds call, Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall.

beware, whilst you assume the softness of the dove, to forget not the cunning of the serpent.

Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, When light is changed to love, this glorious One Floated into the cavern where I lay, And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below As smoke by fire, and in the beauty's glow I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night Was penetrating me with living light: I knew it was the Vision veiled from me So many years - that it was Emily. - Epipsychidion

Men of England, heirs of Glory, Heroes of unwritten story, Nurslings of one mighty Mother, Hopes of her, and one another;

Every man forms, as it were, his god from his own character; to the divinity of one of simple habits, no offering would be more acceptable than the happiness of his creatures. He would be incapable of hating or persecuting others for the love of God.

He will find, moreover, a system of simple diet to be a system of perfect epicurism.