If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to belie...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The soul's joy lies in doing.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such re...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ev...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the heights of love's rare uni...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Mild is the slow necessity of death;
The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,
Without a gr...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY To be omnipotent but friendless is to reign.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes what'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chiva...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The soul's joy lies in doing.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY All things are sold: the very light of heaven is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love, the smalles...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY How wonderful is death! Death and his brother sleep.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY He has outsoared the shadow of our night; envy and calumny and hate and pain, and that unrest which ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the cor...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turn...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY How many a rustic Milton has passed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unre...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and that must be Our...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY For there are deeds Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life... is a monster for which the c...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal. Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood by all, b...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men im...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The Galilean is not a favorite of mine. So far from owing him any thanks for his favor, I cannot avo...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Here I swear, and as I break my oath may eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive C...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells a...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain we...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore,...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep -- he hath awakened from the dream of life -- 'Tis ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY ...What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of hi...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the pl...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should b...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins were as sca...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY There was no corn -- in the wide market-place all loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold; The...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I love snow, snow, and all the forms of radiant frost.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY It is impossible that had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders that he could have h...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than un...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY January gray is here, like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, march with grief doth how...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY All of us, who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mis...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light s...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something af...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY And many an ante-natal tomb When butterflies dream of the life to come.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, The signet of its all-enslaving power Upon a shining...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY . . . then black despair The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY We look before and after, And pine for what is not, Our sincerest laughter With some pai...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, And feeds her grief.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Around, around in ceaseless circles wheeling With clangs of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY There is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
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 Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the i...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY January grey is here, Like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, March with gr...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where mus...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The Moon

And, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Soul meets soul on lovers lips.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY True Love in this differs from gold and clay,/That to divide is not to take away.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY In the firm expectation that when London shall be a habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul and Westm...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Like a glowworm golden, in a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden its aerial blue Among the flow...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some ...
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 When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY And the wand-like lily which lifted up, As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, Till the fier...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books ar...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Hail to thee blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY You must come home with me and be my guest; You will give joy to me, and I will do All that is...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY O, white innocence, That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide Thine awful and serenest...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-k...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, but leech-like to their fainting country cling, till th...
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 There is a snake in thy smile, my dear, And bitter poison within thy tear.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 'Twas his ambition, generous and great A life to life's great end to consecrate.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY First our pleasures die - and then our hopes, and then our fears - and when these are dead, the debt...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Monarchy is only the string that ties the robber's bundle.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mist...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Peter was dull; he was at first Dull;--Oh, so dull--so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Kings are like stars--they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The seed ye sow, another reaps; The wealth ye find, another keeps; The robes ye weave, another...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The breath of accusation kills an innocent name, and leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, which ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Power, like a desolating pestilence, pollutes whatever it touches.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Heaven's ebon vault, studded with stars unutterably bright, through which the moon's unclouded grand...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast; Custards...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mist...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY There is no sport in hate when all the rage is on one side
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Nothing in the world is single
All things by law divine
In one another's being mingle
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast; Cu...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awaken from the dream of life!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but end...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Far clouds of feathery gold, Shaded with deepest purple, gleam Like islands on a dark blue sea...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY ... a wild dissolving bliss Over my frame he breathed, approaching near, And bent his eyes of kindli...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY What 'twas weak to do 'Tis weaker to lament, once being done
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Hell is a city much like London A populous and smoky city
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY One word is too often profaned For me to profane it; One feeling too falsely disdain'd For thee to d...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Nought may endure but Mutability.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Who killed Johnny Keats? "I," said the Quarterly, "So savage and tartarly, 'Twas one of my feats
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Teas, Where small talk dies in agonies
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY In friendships I had been most fortunate
Yet never saw I one whom I would call
More willin...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker, so an unsuccessful author turns critic
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy pow...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Fear not for the future, weep not for the past
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know the...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to belie...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Here I swear, and as I break my oath may eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive C...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY A dream has power to poison sleep.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within t...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY All Love is sweet. Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ev...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY There is eloquence in the tongueless
wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY No more let life divide what death can join together.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Venice, it's temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.
We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the pl...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyo...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympat...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY ... a wild dissolving bliss Over my frame he breathed, approaching near, And bent his eyes of kind...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Wealth and dominion fade into the mass
Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When onc...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their faces away.
WALKER PERCY You can get all A's and still flunk life.
WALKER PERCY You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual, because in spite of great scientific and techn...
WALKER PERCY Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing abou...
WALKER PERCY I travel often, so my routine is always getting scrambled. But on a standard sort of day, I get up a...
BENJAMIN PERCY What needs to be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past, the past gone and grieved ove...
WALKER PERCY The priest persuades a humble people to endure their hard lot, a politician urges them to rebel agai...
MAX PERCY I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern ...
WALKER PERCY Fertilizer does no good in a heap, but a little spread around works miracles all over.
PERCY ROSS He who gives while he lives, get to know where it goes.
PERCY ROSS Many drops make a bucket, many buckets make a pond, many ponds make a lake, and many lakes make an o...
PERCY ROSS The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. T...
WALKER PERCY Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
WALKER PERCY