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Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
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Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets, who is regarded by some as among the finest lyric and philosophical poets in the English language, and one of the most influential. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

Shelley is perhaps best known for classic poems such as "Ozymandias", "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark", "Music, When Soft Voices Die", "The Cloud" and The Masque of Anarchy. His other major works include a groundbreaking verse drama, The Cenci , and long, visionary, philosophical poems such as Queen Mab , Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonais, Prometheus Unbound – widely considered to be his masterpiece, Hellas: A Lyrical Drama and his final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life .

Shelley's close circle of friends included some of the most important progressive thinkers of the day, including his father-in-law, the philosopher William Godwin, and Leigh Hunt. Though Shelley's poetry and prose output remained steady throughout his life, most publishers and journals declined to publish his work for fear of being arrested for either blasphemy or sedition. Shelley's poetry sometimes had only an underground readership during his day, but his poetic achievements are widely recognized today, and his political and social thought had an impact on the Chartist and other movements in England, and reach down to the present day. Shelley's theories of economics and morality, for example, had a profound influence on Karl Marx; his early – perhaps first – writings on nonviolent resistance influenced Leo Tolstoy, whose writings on the subject in turn influenced Mahatma Gandhi, and through him Martin Luther King Jr. and others practicing nonviolence during the American civil rights movement.

Shelley became a lodestar to the subsequent three or four generations of poets, including important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He was admired by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell, W. B. Yeats, Upton Sinclair and Isadora Duncan. Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience was apparently influenced by Shelley's writings and theories on nonviolence in protest and political action. Shelley's popularity and influence has continued to grow in contemporary poetry circles. Wikipedia  

✵ 4. August 1792 – 8. July 1822
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley: 246   quotes 46   likes

Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

“What! alive, and so bold, O earth?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Written on hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“You would not easily guess
All the modes of distress
Which torture the tenants of earth;
And the various evils,
Which like so many devils,
Attend the poor souls from their birth.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Verses On A Cat" (1800), St. 2, as published in Life of Shelley (1858) by Thomas Jefferson Hogg, p. 21

Soul , Birth , Evil

“To that high Capital, where kingly Death
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. VI
Adonais (1821)

Death , Beauty

“Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs —
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Source: To Jane: The Invitation (1822), l. 21

Men , Music , Soul

“The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Song to the Men of England (1819), st. 5

Wealth

“Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 8
(1819)

Death , Horse

“Hell is a city much like London —
A populous and smoky city.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Peter Bell the Third http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4697 (1819), Pt. III, st. 1

Hell

“Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Good-Night http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/complete-works-of-shelley/133/ (1819)

Night

“The butchering of harmless animals cannot fail to produce much of that spirit of insane and hideous exultation in which news of a victory is related altho' purchased by the massacre of a hundred thousand men. If the use of animal food be in consequence, subversive to the peace of human society, how unwarrantable is the injustice and barbarity which is exercised toward these miserable victims. They are called into existence by human artifice that they may drag out a short and miserable existence of slavery and disease, that their bodies may be mutilated, their social feelings outraged. It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"On the Vegetable System of Diet" (c. 1815; published in the 1920s), in Complete Works, ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck, Volume 6 (New York: Gordian Press, 1965), pp. 343-344, original emphasis

Men , Disease , Peace , Food

“Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude
To live alone, an isolated thing?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"The Solitary" (1810), st. 1

“I never thought before my death to see
Youth's vision thus made perfect.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Epipsychidion

Source: Epipsychidion (1821), l. 41

Death , Youth , Perfection

“Should it be proved… that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

On a Future State (1815; publ. 1840)

Law , Intelligence , Universe , Time

“War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Canto IV
Queen Mab (1813)

War , Game

“Age cannot Love destroy,
But perfidy can blast the flower,
Even when in most unwary hour
It blooms in Fancy’s bower.
Age cannot Love destroy,
But perfidy can rend the shrine
In which its vermeil splendours shine.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Untitled (1810); titled "Love's Rose" by William Michael Rossetti in Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1870)

Love , Age , Flowers

“Swiftly walk over 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!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

To Night http://www.readprint.com/work-1379/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1821), st. 1

Fear , Dreams , Joy , Night

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

Age , Revenge

“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.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 1060

Age , World , Faith , Smile

“The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set;
While, blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon,
The cross leads generations on.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 221

“Gold is a living god and rules in scorn,
All earthly things but virtue.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Canto V
Queen Mab (1813)

God

“Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Article 23
"Declaration of Rights" http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/declarat.html (1812)

“From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 69
(1819)

Life , Heart

“The pale stars are gone!
For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,
In the depths of the dawn,
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee
Beyond his blue dwelling,
As fawns flee the leopard.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Voice of Unseen Spirits, Act IV, l. 1
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Star , Sun

“Can man be free if woman be a slave?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Revolt of Islam

Canto II, st. 43
The Revolt of Islam (1817)

“And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Source: To Jane: The Invitation (1822), l. 17

World , Way , Flowers , Appearance

“I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 7
Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley/17889 (1821)

Love , Solitude

“Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

Pain , Pleasure

“Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley To a Skylark

St. 1
To a Skylark (1821)

Art , Bird , Heart

“It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Notes
Queen Mab (1813)
Variant: It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.

Dead

“What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?
What form leans sadly o'er the white death — bed,
In mockery of monumental stone,
The heavy heart heaving without a moan?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XXXV
Adonais (1821)

Death , Heart , Dead

“Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day,
Night followed, clad with stars.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816)

Star , Night

“It is our will
That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise, we might be all
We dream of happy, high, majestical.
Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek,
But in our mind? and if we were not weak,
Should we be less in deed than in desire?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Source: Julian and Maddalo http://www.bartleby.com/139/shel115.html (1819), l. 170

Love , Truth , Beauty , Dreams

“To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be
Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Asia, Act II, sc. iv, l. 47
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Love , Faith , Law

“It doth repent me; words are quick and vain;
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Prometheus, Act I, l. 304
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

“O lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
O press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Indian Serenade

The Indian Serenade (1819), st. 3

Love , Kiss , Grass , Heart

“I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on wh. we trample are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg (3 January 1811)

Thinking , Tree , Animals

“GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Article 1
"Declaration of Rights" http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/declarat.html (1812)

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley

An Exhortation http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley/2579 (1819), st. 1

Love , Food , Light

“There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Question http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1907.html (1820), st. 2

Flowers , Birth , Tear

“What if English toil and blood
Was poured forth, even as a flood?
It availed, Oh, Liberty,
To dim, but not extinguish thee.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 60
(1819)

“We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Preface
Hellas (1821)

Religion , Law , Art , Literature

“Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold
May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in England — thou
Shield'st alike the high and low.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 57
(1819)

Justice , Law , Art

“Some philosophers—and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose… that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

On a Future State (1815; publ. 1840)

Death , Intelligence , Science

“Most musical of mourners, weep again!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. IV
Adonais (1821)

Music

“Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Canto III
Queen Mab (1813)

Men , Truth , Soul , Game

“The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward everlasting fame. These things are not the less poetry, quia carent vate sacro [because they lack a sacred bard]. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

This passage has sometimes been paraphrased as "History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man".
A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

Life , Death , Men , Peace

“That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cloud

The Cloud, iv; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cloud

St. 7
The Cloud (1820)

Water , Change , Daughters

“Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert with certainty that we do or do not live after death.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

On a Future State (1815; publ. 1840)

Death , Question , Nature , Light

“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!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley To Night

To Night (1821), st. 5

Death , Art , Sleep , Night