Music, when soft voices die, Percy Bysshe Shelley More Quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley More Quotes From Percy Bysshe Shelley Far clouds of feathery gold, Shaded with deepest purple, gleam Like islands on a dark blue sea. Percy Bysshe Shelley darkislandsclouds The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me? Percy Bysshe Shelley romantic-lovekissingsea Know ye what it is to be a child? It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief. Percy Bysshe Shelley waterbelievechildren Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! Percy Bysshe Shelley exileparadise Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind. Percy Bysshe Shelley mankindwisdomfound What 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 ignorancefeelingsthinking Worse than despair, Percy Bysshe Shelley bitternessdespairhope Everytime we say that god is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was caused by the forces of nature. Percy Bysshe Shelley forces-of-natureignorantforce The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. Percy Bysshe Shelley going-outsecretbeautiful I love tranquil solitude. Percy Bysshe Shelley tranquilsolitude When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield, That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, And call the sad work glory. Percy Bysshe Shelley madambitiontwo ... Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time. Percy Bysshe Shelley birthcrimevirtue I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. Percy Bysshe Shelley daughteroceanclouds The crime of inquiry is one which religion never has forgiven. Percy Bysshe Shelley forgiveninquirycrime Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense. Percy Bysshe Shelley sufferingworkheart The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats, tho' unseen, amongst us. Percy Bysshe Shelley unseenshadowpower What is Freedom? ye can tell That which slavery is, too well For its very name has grown To an echo of your own. Percy Bysshe Shelley slaveryechoesnames A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift. Percy Bysshe Shelley spiritbeautiful Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. Percy Bysshe Shelley marriagechoicesvices To be omnipotent but friendless is to reign. Percy Bysshe Shelley reignsocietyleadership
