Percy Bysshe Shelley quotes
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822): British Romantic poet. The library holds 72 quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley, drawn from Queen Mab, Hellas, Adonais and other works. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: nature, art, life, grief, hope, money
The best-known Percy Bysshe Shelley quotes
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Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
Julian and Maddalo -
Kings are like stars,—they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.
Hellas, Line 195 -
With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
The Revolt of Islam, Canto v. Stanza 23 -
The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.
One Word is too often profaned -
Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.
Queen Mab. iii -
Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.
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Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
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Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.
A Defence of Poetry Disputed attribution -
You must come home with me and be my guest; You will give joy to me, and I will do All that is in my power to honor you.
Hymn to Mercury -
The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set; While, blazoned as on heaven’s immortal noon, The cross leads generations on.
Hellas, Line 221 -
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.
Adonais. lii -
How wonderful is Death! Death and his brother Sleep.
Queen Mab. i -
History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man.
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Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore and called it gold.
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Reviewers, 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.
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Those of us who are worth anything spend our manhood in unlearning the follies or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
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A poet is a nightingale, who sits in the darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
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Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.
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Religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical code of misery and servitude… How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image, should she look into the mirror of Nature!
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Now all the tree-tops lay asleep, Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep The ocean woods may be.
The Recollection -
Under heaven’s high cope Fortune is god—all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you.
Epigrams. From the Greek -
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song in sorrow.
Adonais. xxx -
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling are one.
To Jane. The keen Stars were twinkling -
To hope till hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.
Prometheus, Act iv -
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.
Julian and Maddalo, Line 482 -
But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue.
Queen Mab, Pt. V -
That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon.
The Cloud. iv -
Echoes we: listen! We cannot stay, As dewdrops glisten, Then fade away.
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When the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.
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Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
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I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear.
Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples, Stanza 4 -
How vainly seek The selfish for that happiness denied To aught but virtue!
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And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale, That the light of its tremulous bells is seen, Through their pavilions of tender green.
The Sensitive Plant -
Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken.
Music, When Soft Voices Die -
Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.
Revolt of Islam, Dedication, St. 6 -
I love tranquil solitude And such society As is quiet, wise, and good.
Rarely, rarely comest Thou -
The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats, though unseen, among us.
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As in the soft and sweet eclipse. When soul meets soul on lover’s lips.
Prometheus Unbound, Act iv -
Fear not that tyrants shall rule for ever, Or the priests of the bloody faith; They stand on the brink of that mighty river Whose waves they have tainted with death.
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From kings and priests and statesmen war arose, Whose safety is man’s deep embittered woe, Whose grandeur his debasement.
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Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken.
Music, when soft Voices die -
You lie—under a mistake, For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man’s face. I now Say what I think.
Translation of Calderon’s Magico Prodigioso, Scene i -
All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
Prometheus Unbound, Act ii. Sc. 5 -
In just and equal measure all is weighed; One scale contains the sum of human weal, And one, the good man’s heart.
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There the sea I found Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.
The Revolt of Islam, Canto I -
There is great talk of revolution, And a great chance of despotism, German soldiers, camps, confusion, Tumults, lotteries, rage, delusion, Gin, suicide, and Methodism.
Peter Bell the Third, Hell, St. 6 -
Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope; It is the only ill which can find place Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour Tottering beneath us.
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The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats, tho’ unseen, amongst us.
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty -
Peter was dull; he was at first Dull,—oh so dull, so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed, Still with this dulness was he cursed! Dull,—beyond all conception, dull.
Peter Bell the Third, Part vii. xi -
Heaven’s ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright.
Queen Mab -
Heaven’s ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.
Queen Mab, Pt. IV -
The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn.
Hellas, Line 1060 -
What ’twas weak to do, ’Tis weaker to lament, once being done.
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The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn.
Hellas, Line 1060 -
A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.
The Witch of Atlas, Stanza 5 -
Light enchanted sunflower, thou Who gazest ever true and tender On the sun’s revolving splendor! * * * * * Restless sunflowers, cease to move.
Tr. of “Magico Prodigioso” of Calderon, Sc. 3 -
Hell is a city much like London—A populous and a smoky city; There are all sorts of people undone, And there is little or no fun done; Small justice shown, and still less pity.
Peter Bell the Third, Pt. iii -
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
Prometheus Unbound, Act i -
Fear not the future; weep not for the past.
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Worse than a bloody hand is a bloody heart.
The Cenci, Act v. Sc. 2
Where these quotes come from
- Queen Mab (6 quotes)
- Hellas (4 quotes)
- Adonais (3 quotes)
- Prometheus Unbound (3 quotes)
- Julian and Maddalo (2 quotes)
- The Revolt of Islam (2 quotes)
- Peter Bell the Third (2 quotes)
- The Cenci (2 quotes)
Every quote comes from a public-domain edition. How the library was made .