Percy Bysshe Shelley > Quotes

“The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

“Soul meets soul on lovers lips.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue With Other Poems

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester

“We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell
Of saddest thought.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

“The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

“No more let life divide what death can join together.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais

“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

“Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
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 disdained 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 Shelley

“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Joy, once lost, is pain”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Music, When Soft Voices Die

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

“And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems

“The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“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

“Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

“I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me- who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, Sweet!”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, what doubts should we have concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“All love is sweet, given or received...”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Know what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of Baptism; it is to believe in belief; it is to be so little that elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child had its fairy godmother in its soul.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

“What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley