Percy Bysshe Shelley

“First our pleasures die - and then Our hopes, and then our fears - and when These are dead, the debt is due, Dust claims dust - and we die too.”

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

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

“Man who man would be, must rule the empire of himself.”

“First our pleasures die - and then our hopes, and then our fears - and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust - and we die too.”

“The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.”

“When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - in which case all comment is superfluous - or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.”

“The being called God...bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar.”

“Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.”

“I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.”

“In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.”

“Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.”

“Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”

“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.”

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted”

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

“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 ano...”

“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.”

“Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.”

“Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.”

“Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.”

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”

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

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”

“Familiar acts are beautiful through love.”

“All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.”

“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.”

“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”

“Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.”

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”

“Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.”

“Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.”

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

“Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.”

“Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”

“Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.”

“Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker.”

“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

“Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.”

“The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.”

“Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.”

“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.”

“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”

“When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

“The Moon And, like a dying lady lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky east A white and shapeless mass. Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the...”

“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.”

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

“Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.”

“That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon.”

“How many a rustic Milton has passed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail!”

“Soul meets soul on lovers lips.”

“God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.”

“God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate.”

“He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.”

“No more let life divide what death can join together.”

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

“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.”

“I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within their own eternity.”

“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.”

“War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.”

“There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!”

“O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

“When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.”

“Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.”

“In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.”

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