Quotes from Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

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.

The soul's joy lies in doing.

History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.

Our Adonais has drunk poisonoh! What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?

O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb

I Fall upon the thorns of life.

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep - he hath awakened from the dream of life - 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife.

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow claspest the limits of mortality.

The splendors of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil.

Contemporary criticism only represents the amount of ignorance genius has to contend with. . . . Time will reverse the judgement of the vulgar.

Heaven's ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.

I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, when the winds are breathing low, and the stars are shining bright.

Fate,Time,Occasion,Chance, and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal love.

Know ye what it is to be a child? It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief.

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

Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets food is love and fame.

Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.

... Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.

The flood of time is rolling on; We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone To glide in peace down death's mysterious stream. Have ye done well?

But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

My father Time is weak and gray With waiting for a better day; See how idiot-like he stands, Fumbling with his palsied hands!

Sometimes it's better to put love into hugs than to put it into words. Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.