Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyOne word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIt were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower -- and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyWe live and move and think; but we are not the creators of our own origin and existence. We are not the arbiters of every motion of our own complicated nature; we are not the masters of our own imaginations and moods of mental being.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyLet the advocate of animal food, force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror let him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent.
Percy Bysshe Shelley