Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes - Page 8

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• I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Poetry, Political, Moral

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1840). “Journal of a six weeks' tour. Letters from Geneva. Journal at Geneva: ghost stories, Journal: return to England. Letters from Italy”, p.129

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• Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes To multiply your lovely selves?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Eye, Thinking, Self

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1861). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Complete in One Volume”, p.231

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• Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep — that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Sleep, Soul, Slumber

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats (1831). “The poetical works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats”, p.467

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• All love is sweet, given or received.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Sweet, Love Is, Given

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• Like a glowworm golden, in a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden its aerial blue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Flower, Blue, Views

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1901). “The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”

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• Poetry 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 Shelley

  Wedding, Sweet, Brother

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1877). “Favorite Poems”, p.45

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• If 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 Shelley

  Love, Children, Eye

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”

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• Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay you low?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Men, England, Lord

  'Song to the Men of England'

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• Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Moving, Inspiration, Writing

  A Defence of Poetry (written 1821) See Auden 22; Auden 39; Andrew Fletcher 1; Samuel Johnson 22; Twain 104

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• All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Poetry, Firsts, Acorns

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1852). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.35

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• Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Rivers, Rolling, Decay

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1853). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete in One Volume”, p.317

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• Death will come when thou art dead, soon, too soon.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Death, Art

  'To Night'

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• Be your strong and simple words Keen to wound as sharpened swords, And wide as targes let them be, With their shade to cover ye.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Strong, Simple, Shade

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.234

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• 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.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Stars, Night, Sorrow

  "To - : One word is too often profaned" l. 13 (1824)

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• Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Spirit, Classic, Hail

  "To a Skylark" l. 1 (1819)

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• 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

  Sweet, Winter, Thinking

  'Adonais' (1821) preface

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• Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore, and called it gold: before whose image bow the vulgar great, the vainly rich, the miserable proud, the mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, and with blind feelings reverence the power that grinds them to the dust of misery.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Kings, Power, Dust

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.10

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• Jesus 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

  Wise, Jesus, Evil

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1880). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose, Now First Brought Together with Many Pieces Not Before Published”

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• A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beauty, Light, Lovely Lady

  'The Witch of Atlas' (written 1820; published 1824) st. 5

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• And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade, All disguised, even to the eyes, Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Eye, Spy, Bishops

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1840). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.231

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• 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 Shelley

  Determination, Men, Wind

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2006). “A Defence of Poetry: an Essay: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.44, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• We know not what we do
  When we speak words.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Speak, Knows

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, G. Cuningham (1857). “The poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.328

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• Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Exercise, Men, Moral

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994). “The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley”, p.642, Wordsworth Editions

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• Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Happiness, Race, Roots

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1822). “Queen Mab”, p.112

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• Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Peace, Brother, War

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Richard Herne Shepherd (1810). “The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley ... Ed. ... by Richard Herne Shepherd”, p.286

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