“Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.”
A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)
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Percy Bysshe Shelley 246
English Romantic poet 1792–1822Related quotes

Le mal n'est peut-être qu'un violent plaisir. Qui pourrait déterminer le point où la volupté devient un mal et celui où le mal est encore la volupté ? Les plus vives lumières du monde idéal ne caressent-elles pas la vue, tandis que les plus douces ténèbres du monde physique la blessent toujours.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part I: The Talisman

Hymn 66, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book II.
Attributed from postum publications, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1773)
have you ever seen anyone who could take anything from me against my will, ever, anywhere, anytime?
The Silver Wolf

“Of pleasures, those which occur most rarely give the most delight.”
Fragment xi.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

“The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.”

“In soft deluding lies let fools delight.
A shadow marks our days, which end in Night.”
"On a Sundial"
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

“There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.”
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 285.