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Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

Total quotes: 22
“Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays
Tagged: Life, World, Miracle, Wonder, Being
“In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays
Tagged: Truth, Communication, Perception, Reason
“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais
Tagged: cemetery, Death, in love with death
“How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab
Tagged: Death, Sleep
“The more we study, we the more discover
Our ignorance.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Scenes from the Magico Prodigioso
Tagged: Study, Knowledge, Discover, Ignorance
“When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead —
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, When the Lamp is Shattered
Tagged: Love, sweet
“First our pleasures die — and then
Our hopes, and then our fears — and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust — and we die too.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Death
Tagged: Death, Dying, Hope, Fear
“I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cenci
Tagged: Joy, Drunk, Wine, Drinking
“Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle —
Why not I with thine?”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Love's Philosophy
Tagged: Single, No Man Is An Island, romance
“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
Tagged: Despair, Tired, Life, Rest, Death
“We rest. — A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. — One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! — For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mutability
Tagged: Rest, Dream, Waking Up, Feelings, Joy, Sorrow
“Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep, — that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mont Blanc
Tagged: Remote, World, Soul, Death
“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
Tagged: Twilight, Night, Day, Stars
“Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude
To live alone, an isolated thing?”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Solitary
Tagged: Solitude, Isolation, Alone
“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
Tagged: Distress, Torture, Evil
“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays
Tagged: Imagination, Man, Pain, Pleasure, Morality
“No more let life divide what death can join together.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais
Tagged: Death, Life
“Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Tagged: Music, Memory, voice
“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
Tagged: Winter, Spring, Waiting, Season, Hope
“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Tagged: Songs, poem, Thought
“As I must die on thine,
O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Indian Serenade
Tagged: Love Poem
“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley's Poetry and Prose(Norton Critical Edition)
Tagged: Literature In Love, Love and Literature
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