Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something better than reason. Percy Bysshe Shelley More Quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley More Quotes From Percy Bysshe Shelley True love in this differs from gold and clay, that to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, gazing on many truths. Percy Bysshe Shelley understanding gold love Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. Percy Bysshe Shelley moral exercise men The advocates of literal interpretation have been the most efficacious enemies of those doctrines whose nature they profess to venerate. Percy Bysshe Shelley interpretation doctrine enemy I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. Percy Bysshe Shelley mother dream sweet The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward. Not only Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition. Percy Bysshe Shelley example philosophy jesus But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens, imperial spirits, Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set. Percy Bysshe Shelley men war past The breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it. Percy Bysshe Shelley lame innocent names In the firm expectation that when London shall be a habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul and Westminster Abbey shall stand shapeless and nameless ruins in the midst of an unpeopled marsh, when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges and their historians. Percy Bysshe Shelley broken bridges expectations Songs consecrate to truth and liberty. Percy Bysshe Shelley liberty song Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. Percy Bysshe Shelley pity cutting wings The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. Percy Bysshe Shelley command-not soul men In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Percy Bysshe Shelley respect self drama GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being. Percy Bysshe Shelley government purpose rights Titles are tinsel, power a corrupter, glorya bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor. Percy Bysshe Shelley titles libel wealth Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Percy Bysshe Shelley larks skills book My neighbour, or my servant, or my child, has done me an injury, and it is just that he should suffer an injury in return. Such is the doctrine which Jesus Christ summoned his whole resources of persuasion to oppose. Percy Bysshe Shelley suffering children jesus 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. Percy Bysshe Shelley secret forever beauty It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower -- and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel. Percy Bysshe Shelley flower wise spring Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, but leech-like to their fainting country cling, till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, - a people starved and stabbed in the untilled field. Percy Bysshe Shelley blow country blood Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on. Percy Bysshe Shelley green sea needs
