We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYWe look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYWhen a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid – in which case all comment is superfluous – or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYFirst our pleasures die – and then our hopes, and then our fears – and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust – and we die too.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYPoets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYJoy, once lost, is pain.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYWhen my cats aren’t happy, I’m not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they’re just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYI wish no living thing to suffer pain.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYA sensitive plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan like leaves to the light, and closed them beneath the kisses of night.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYA man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYThere is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYHeaven’s ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYNothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYHell is a city much like London A populous and smoky city.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYWhen the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead – When the cloud is scattered The rainbow’s glory is shed.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYFate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal love.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEYIn fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY