Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

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 is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear, — Till death like sleep might steal on me
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

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

I am willing to admit that some few axioms of morality, which Christianity has borrowed from the philosophers of Greece and India, dictate, in an unconnected state, rules of conduct worthy of regard; but the purest and most elevated lessons of morality must remain nugatory, the most probable inducements to virtue must fail of their effect, so long as the slightest weight is attached to that dogma which is the vital essence of revealed religion.

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth, a libel on its possessor.

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

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy power which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates

Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love repulsed -but it returneth.

With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.

Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!

He is made one with Nature: there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird.

Soul meets soul on lovers lips.

Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared: This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth.

Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?

My father Time is weak and gray With waiting for a better day; See how idiot-like he stands, Fumbling with his palsied hands!