Titles are tinsel, power a corrupter, glorya bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor. Percy Bysshe Shelley More Quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley More Quotes From Percy Bysshe Shelley It is thus that the generality of mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attributes to the Divinity, not only the unusual effects which strike them, but moreover the most simple events, of which the causes are the most simple to understand by whomever is able to study them. In a word, man has always respected unknown causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the imaginary colossus of the Divinity. Percy Bysshe Shelley ignorance simple men Let there be light! Said Liberty , And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose! Percy Bysshe Shelley sunrise light sea Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness...and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Percy Bysshe Shelley determination wind men Where art thou, beloved To-morrow? Percy Bysshe Shelley strong sweet art I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown. Percy Bysshe Shelley wave stars light Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears! Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore, Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable sea? Percy Bysshe Shelley ocean sea years So soon as this want or power [of love] is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was. Percy Bysshe Shelley want love men Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. Percy Bysshe Shelley community powerful love Sometimes it's better to put love into hugs than to put it into words. Soul meets soul on lovers' lips. Percy Bysshe Shelley lips hug soul The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. Percy Bysshe Shelley weed dream winter Love! dearest, sweetest power! how much are we indebted to thee! How much superior are even thy miseries to the pleasures which arise from other sources! Percy Bysshe Shelley misery pleasure love I love Love -- though he has wings, And like light can flee. Percy Bysshe Shelley light wings love So is Hope Changed for Despair-one laid upon the shelf, We take the other. Under heaven's high cope Fortune is god-all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you. Percy Bysshe Shelley despair fortune heaven O cease! must hate and death return, Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last! Percy Bysshe Shelley hate men past You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Percy Bysshe Shelley individual circles love Our Adonais has drunk poisonoh! What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life's early cup with such a draught of woe? Percy Bysshe Shelley woe crowns drunk Ere Babylon was dust, The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the garden, That apparition, sole of men, he saw. Percy Bysshe Shelley garden men children I know the cause of all human disappointment -- worldly prejudice. Percy Bysshe Shelley prejudice causes disappointment The howl of self-interest is loud ... but the heart is black which throbs solely to its note. Percy Bysshe Shelley black self heart I am not much of a hand at love songs, you see I mingle metaphysics with even this, but perhaps in this age of Philosophy that may be excused. Percy Bysshe Shelley song philosophy hands
