02c. 1807 ADAnd in a mad tranceStrike with our spirit's knifeInvulnerable nothingsWe decayLike corpses in a charnelFear & GriefConvulse is & consume usDay by dayAnd cold hopes swarmLike worms withinOur living clayPercy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
03c. 1807 ADJoy, joy, joy!Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,And the future is dark, and the present is spread,Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
04c. 1807 ADThough we eat little flesh and drink no wine,Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;Custards for supper, and an endless hostOf syllabubs and jellies and mincepies,And other such ladylike luxuries.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
05c. 1807 ADIf he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
06c. 1807 ADA God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
07c. 1807 ADHuman vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
08c. 1807 ADEvery fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
10c. 1807 ADAt the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God’s own heart?Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
11c. 1807 ADThere was a Being whom my spirit oftMet on its visioned wanderings far aloft.A seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human,Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman....Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
12c. 1807 ADAlas! this is not what I thought life was.I knew that there were crimes and evil men,Misery and hate; nor did I hope to passUntouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.In mine own heart I saw as in a glassThe hearts of others ... And whenI went among my kind, with triple brassOf calm endurance my weak breast I armed,To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woeful mass!Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
13c. 1807 ADI can give not what men call love;But wilt thou accept notThe worship the heart lifts aboveAnd the heavens reject not:The desire of the moth for the star,Of the night for the morrow,The devotion to something afarFrom the sphere of our sorrow?Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
15c. 1807 ADA poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
16c. 1807 ADSee the mountains kiss high HeavenAnd the waves clasp one another;No sister-flower would be forgivenIf it disdained its brother;And the sunlight clasps the earth,And the moonbeams kiss the sea -What is all this sweet work worthIf thou kiss not me?Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
17c. 1807 ADWhat is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
18c. 1807 ADConfound the subtlety of lawyers with the subtlety of the law.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
19c. 1807 ADSorrow (A Song)To me this world's a dreary blank,All hopes in life are gone and fled,My high strung energies are sank,And all my blissful hopes lie dead.--The world once smiling to my view, Showed scenes of endless bliss and joy;The world I then but little knew,Ah! little knew how pleasures cloy;All then was jocund, all was gay,No thought beyond the present hour,I danced in pleasure’s fading ray,Fading alas! as drooping flower.Nor do the heedless in the throng,One thought beyond the morrow give,They court the feast, the dance, the song, Nor think how short their time to live.The heart that bears deep sorrow’s trace,What earthly comfort can console,It drags a dull and lengthened pace,'Till friendly death its woes enroll.--The sunken cheek, the humid eyes,E’en better than the tongue can tell;In whose sad breast deep sorrow lies,Where memory's rankling traces dwell.--The rising tear, the stifled sigh, A mind but ill at ease display,Like blackening clouds in stormy sky,Where fiercely vivid lightnings play.Thus when souls' energy is dead,When sorrow dims each earthly view, When every fairy hope is fled,We bid ungrateful world adieu.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
20c. 1807 ADEquality in possessions must be the last result of the utmost refinements of civilization; it is one of the conditions of that system of society towards which, with whatever hope of ultimate success, it is our duty to tend.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
21c. 1807 ADAnd on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
22c. 1807 ADBefore we aspire after theoretical perfection in the amelioration of our political state, it is necessary that we possess those advantages which we have been cheated of, and which the experience of modern times has proved that nations even under the present conditions are susceptible.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
23c. 1807 ADSorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
24c. 1807 ADWe look before and after, And pine for what is not:Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.Yet if we could scornHate, and pride, and fear;If we were things bornNot to shed a tear,I know not how thy joy we everShould come near.Percy Bysshe Shelley / quote ↗
