Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness...and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyWar is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIt is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyThou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyYes, marriage is hateful, detestable. A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequited fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyDrive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Percy Bysshe ShelleyPoetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyThe mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within...could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the result; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline; and the most glorious poetry that has been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyEvery man, in proportion to his virtue, considers himself, with respect to the great community of mankind, as the steward and guardian of their interests in the property which he chances to possess. Every man, in proportion to his wisdom, sees the manner in which it is his duty to employ the resources which the consent of mankind has intrusted to his discretion.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyThere is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet, and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried.
Percy Bysshe ShelleySee the mountains kiss high Heaven And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea - What is all this sweet work worth If thou kiss not me?
Percy Bysshe ShelleyFor this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyJust a tender sense of my own process, that holds something of my connection with the divine.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIt is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyDeath is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyKnow ye what it is to be a child? It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyThe Galilean is not a favorite of mine. So far from owing him any thanks for his favor, I cannot avoid confessing that I owe a secret grudge to his carpentership.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyJesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIt were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyTo hearts which near each other move From evening close to morning light,The night is good; because, my love,They never say good-night.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIt is thus that the generality of mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attributes to the Divinity, not only the unusual effects which strike them, but moreover the most simple events, of which the causes are the most simple to understand by whomever is able to study them. In a word, man has always respected unknown causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the imaginary colossus of the Divinity.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyForget the dead, the past? O yet there are ghosts that may take revenge for it, memories that make the heart a tomb, regrets which gild thro’ the spirit’s gloom, and with ghastly whispers tell that joy, once lost, is pain.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIt is impossible that had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders that he could have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIt is true that the reluctance to abstain from animal food, in those who have been long accustomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of weak minds, as to be scarcely overcome; but this is far from bringing any argument in its favour
Percy Bysshe ShelleyIf a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless
Percy Bysshe ShelleyBefore man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyMy neighbour, or my servant, or my child, has done me an injury, and it is just that he should suffer an injury in return. Such is the doctrine which Jesus Christ summoned his whole resources of persuasion to oppose.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyI am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die.
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 ShelleyIt is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from generation to generation) that whole peoples adore the God of their fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and custom with them take the place of conviction or of proofs: they prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers taught them to prostrate themselves and pray: but why did their fathers fall on their knees?
Percy Bysshe Shelley