Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyO weep for Adonis - He is dead." "Peace. He is not dead he doth not sleep - he hath wakened from the dream of life
Percy Bysshe ShelleyFirst 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... Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyThe great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasure of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyHuman vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyPoetry Love's Philosophy The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the ocean, The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine In one another's being mingle— Why not I with thine? See the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdain'd its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea— What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?
Percy Bysshe ShelleyReviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIf we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love.
Percy Bysshe ShelleySing again, with your dear voice revealing. A tone Of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyA poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyNature rejects the monarch, not the man; the subject, not the citizen... The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyWe are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyContemporary criticism only represents the amount of ignorance genius has to contend with. . . . Time will reverse the judgement of the vulgar.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIf certain Critics were as clearsighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their writings!
Percy Bysshe ShelleyLove withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyPoets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyThe 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 ShelleyWhat do you think? Young women of rank eat - you will never guess what - garlick!
Percy Bysshe ShelleyWe rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wand'ring 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 ShelleyLove is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.
Percy Bysshe ShelleySorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyI am convinced that there can be no regeneration of mankind until laughter is put down.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyKings are like stars,-they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyLie bills and calculations much perplexed, With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyJesus Christ represented God as the principle of all good, the source of all happiness, the wise and benevolent Creator and Preserver of all living things. But the interpreters of his doctrines have confounded the good and the evil principle.
Percy Bysshe Shelley