Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

And like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil.

Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companion less Among the stars that have a different birth, And ever-changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?

Swiftly walk o’er the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, Swift be thy flight!

I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed: Gods and men, we are all deluded thus! It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed.

Less oft peace in Shelley’s mind, Than calm in waters seen.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow bind and the moonlight-coloured may.

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets.

O cease! must hate and death return, Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

Let there be light! Said Liberty, And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose!

Life may change, but it may fly not, Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, but it returneth!

Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon
Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved Night Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

A single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought.

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting on the cause.

The vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language to another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower.

An isle under Ionian skies Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise.

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away.

The beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.

I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion.

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly: Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.