Percy Bysshe Shelley: Quotes about life

Percy Bysshe Shelley was English Romantic poet. Explore interesting quotes on life.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: 492 quotes47 likes

“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!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 34

“I love Love — though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee —
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 8 <br class="br"> Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley/17889 (1821)

“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. LII
Adonais (1821)
Context: 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.

“He hath awakened from the dream of life—
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XXXIX
Adonais (1821)
Context: 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,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings.

“Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 7
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)
Context: The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past; there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

“No more let life divide what death can join together.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

Source: Adonais

“Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Earth, Act III, sc. iii, l. 113
Variant: Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life.
Source: Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

“I Fall upon the thorns of life….”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

“A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift —
A Love in desolation masked; — a Power
Girt round with weakness; — it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow; — even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XXXII
Adonais (1821)

“To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night;
To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change nor falter nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Demogorgon, Act IV, closing lines
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

“Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

St. 3
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)

“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)

“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". <br class="br"> A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

“The breath
Of accusation kills an innocent name,
And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life,
Which is a mask without it.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cenci

The Cenci (1819)

“Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples http://www.readprint.com/work-1373/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1818), st. 5

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley book Ode to the West Wind

St. IV
Ode to the West Wind (1819)

“Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness;
The baser from the nobler; the impure
And frail, from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law
By which those live, to whom this world of life
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Epipsychidion

Source: Epipsychidion (1821), l. 174