Shelley Quotes

• There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Soul, Frankenstein's Monster, Intertwined

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1993). “Frankenstein”, p.18, Wordsworth Editions

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• I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Believe, Likes, Imagine

  "Fictional character: The Creature". "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein", www.imdb.com. 1994.

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• The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.

  Erica Jong

  Daughter, Mother, Women

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• On thinking about Hell, I gather
  My brother Shelley found it was a place
  Much like the city of London. I
  Who live in Los Angeles and not in London
  Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be
  Still more like Los Angeles.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Brother, Thinking, Cities

  Bertolt Brecht, Erich Fried (1979). “Poems”

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• I think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Thinking, Language, Kind

  Source: thefloatinglibrary.com

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• Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principle moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Names, Interesting, Political

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• We cannot arrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world from his tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regarding things, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any one of their important works.

  Andrew Coyle Bradley

  Tragedy, Important, World

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• It's been such a deep and amazing journey for me, getting close to John Keats, and also I love Shelley and Byron. I mean, the thing about the Romantic poets is that they've got the epitaph of romantic posthumously. They all died really young, and Keats, the youngest of them all.

  Jane Campion

  Mean, Journey, Poet

  "Jane Campion's Ode To Keats' Romantic Love". "All Things Considered" with Melissa Block, www.npr.org. September 18, 2009.

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• I carry Yeats with me wherever I go. He's my constant companion. I always can find some comfort in Yeats no matter what the situation is. Months and months and months go by and I know I need to switch to Shelley or somebody else, but right now Yeats is enough for me.

  Linda Hamilton

  Comfort, Needs, Matter

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• Shelley was an idol of mine -- and many -- an extraordinary woman with powerful charisma, enormous talent and a keen, perceptive mind.

  Connie Stevens

  Powerful, Idols, Mind

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• Less oft peace in Shelley's mind, Than calm in waters seen.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Water, Mind, Calm

  'To Jane: The Recollection'

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• The neo-conservative critics of leftist critics of mass culture ridicule the protest against Bach as background music in the kitchen, against Plato and Hegel, Shelley and Baudelaire, Marx and Freud in the drugstore. Instead, they insist on recognition of the fact that the classics have left the mausoleum and come to life again, that people are just so much more educated. True, but coming to life as classics, they come to life as other than themselves; they are deprived of their antagonistic force, of the estrangement which was the very dimension of their truth.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Plato, Mass Culture, People

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.67, Routledge

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• I make no apology for writing in nature's age-old and unaging language, of whose images we build our paradises, Broceliande and Brindavan, the Forest of Arden, Xanadu, Shelley's Skies, or even Wordsworth's Grasemere, which can be found on no map.

  Kathleen Raine

  Writing, Apology, Sky

  Kathleen Raine (1989). “Selected Poems”, p.6, SteinerBooks

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• When I started this song I was still thirty-three The age that Mozart died and sweet Jesus was set free Keats and Shelley too soon finished, Charley Parker would be And I fantasized some tragedy'd be soon curtailing me Well just today I had my birthday I made it thirty-four Mere mortal, not immortal, not star-crossed anymore I've got this problem with my aging I no longer can ignore A tame and toothless tabby can't produce a lion's roar.

  Harry Chapin

  Sweet, Song, Jesus

  Song: There Only Was One Choice, Album: Dance Band on the Titanic, 1977

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• I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander Pope was inevitably Alexander Pope. Colley Cibber was a silly little man without much elegance and Shelley was very Percy and very Bysshe.

  James Joyce

  Funny, Humorous, Silly

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• Alex kneels down to Shelley's level. The simple act of respect tears at something suspiciously like my heart. Colin always ignores my sister, treating her as if she's blind and deaf as well as physically and mentally disabled.

  Simone Elkeles

  Heart, Simple, Tears

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• The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. Paintings of Moreau are paintings of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom; Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.

  James Joyce

  Art, Plato, Spring

  James Joyce (2016). “Ulysses”, p.188, First Avenue Editions

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• Nico was gothic, but she was Mary Shelley gothic to everyone else's Hammer horror film gothic. They both did Frankenstein, but Nico's was real.

  Peter Murphy

  Real, Hammers, Gothic

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• I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things

  Clifford Geertz

  People, Soul, Literature

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• Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up to date in their chemical knowledge.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Science, Lasts, Poet

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• In English, we were still on the Introduction to Poetry Unit, and I'm not lying, if I ever meet Percy Bysshe Shelley walking down the streets of Marysville, I'm going to punch him right in the face.

  Gary D. Schmidt

  Lying, Faces, Introduction

  Gary D. Schmidt (2011). “Okay for Now”, p.265, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Well, you've done it now," was her sisterly opening shot. Jaine rubbed between her eyebrows; a definite headache was forming. After the exchange with David, she waited to see where this one was going. "I won't be able to hold up my head in church." "Really? Oh, Shelley, I'm so sorry," Jaine said sweetly. "I didn't realize you have the dreaded Limp Neck disease. When were you diagnosed?

  Linda Howard

  Sorry, Eyebrows, Church

  Linda Howard (2012). “Mr Perfect”, p.128, Simon and Schuster

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• Okay, let me get a pen." There were rustling noises. "I can't find one." More noises. "Okay,shoot." "You found a pen?" "No, but I have a can of Cheez Whiz. I'll write your number on the counter with it, then find a pen and copy it." Jaine recited her number and listened to the spewing noise as Shelley Cheez-Whizzed it on her countertop.

  Linda Howard

  Writing, Numbers, Noise

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• Have not Manet and Monet, Cézanne and Matisse, rendered to painting something of the same service which Keats and Shelley gave to poetry after the solemn and ceremonious literary perfections of the eighteenth century? They have brought back to the pictorial art a new draught of joie de vivre; and the beauty of their work is instinct with gaiety, and floats in sparkling air. I do not expect these masters would particularly appreciate my defence, but I must avow an increasing attraction to their work.

  Winston Churchill

  Art, Air, Appreciate

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• Chef Matt Accarrino has the best pasta in San Francisco, and Shelley Lindgren is one of my favorite sommeliers. Their attention to detail in the service, food, and amazing wines will blow anyone away.

  Elizabeth Falkner

  Wine, Blow, San Francisco

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