SHELLEY, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.
English author, 1757 – 1851.
1. "His science was simply human and human science, I soon convinced myself, could never conquer nature's laws so far as to imprison the soul."
2. "I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
3. “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of voice, but out of chaos.”
4. “It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.”
5. “My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed -- my dearest pleasure when free.”
6. “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness.”
7. “Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose -- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”
8. “Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”
9. "There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand . . . there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore. "
10. "The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember."
11. “We are tomorrow's past.”
SHELLEY, PERCY B.
1. “And many an ante-natal tomb
When butterflies dream of the life to come.”
2. ”And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”
3. “And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?”
4. ”Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, -
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?”
5. “As in the soft and sweet eclipse,
When soul meets soul on lover's lips.”
6. “Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery.”
7. "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past."
8. “He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.”
9. “History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.”
10. “I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
when the winds are breathing low,
and the stars are shining bright.”
11. "If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another s; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love."
12. “I love all waste and solitary places.”
13. “In an ocean of dreams without a sound.”
14. “I seem as in a trance, sublime and strange
To muse on my won separate fantasy.”
15. “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.”
16. “Kiss me, so long but as a kiss my live;
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive.”
17. “Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity."
18. "Lift not the painted veil which those who live call Life."
19. “Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds
Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing.”
20. "Man who man would be, must rule the empire of himself."
21. "Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.”
22. "Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."
23. “Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.”
24. “ON a Poet's lips I slept,
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses.”
25. ”Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”
26. "Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life."
27. “Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”
28. “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
29. "Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton."
30. "Reason respects differences, and imagination the similitudes of things."
31. "She stood beside him like a rainbow braided."
32. “Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep -- that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.”
33. “Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”
34. “Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,—where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,—why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?”
35. ”Tell me, Moon, thou pale and gray
Pilgrim of Heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of noght or day
Seekest thou repose now?”
36. “THE AWFUL shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us,—visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,—
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,—
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—
Like memory of music fled,—
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.”
37. “The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume.”
38. “The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.”
39. “The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind . . . .”
40. “The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things, by a law divine,
In one another's being mingle--
Why not I with thine?”
41. “The past Hours weak and gray
With the spoil which their toil
Raked together
From the conquest but One could foil.”
42. “The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.”
43. “The world is weary of the past, oh, might it die or rest at last.”
44. "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."
45. “Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes
To multiply your lovely selves?”
46. "War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade."
47. “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.”
48. “Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being.”
49. “What is Love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves.”
50. “When 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.”
51. “Worlds on worlds are rolling ever / From creation to decay, / Like the bubbles on a river / Sparkling, bursting, borne away. / But they are still immortal / Who, through birth's orient portal / And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight / In the brief dust and light / Gathered around their chariots as they go; / New shapes they still may weave, / New Gods, new laws receive, / Bright or dim are they as the robes they last /On Death's bare ribs had cast.”
English author, 1757 – 1851.
1. "His science was simply human and human science, I soon convinced myself, could never conquer nature's laws so far as to imprison the soul."
2. "I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
3. “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of voice, but out of chaos.”
4. “It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.”
5. “My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed -- my dearest pleasure when free.”
6. “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness.”
7. “Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose -- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”
8. “Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”
9. "There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand . . . there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore. "
10. "The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember."
11. “We are tomorrow's past.”
SHELLEY, PERCY B.
1. “And many an ante-natal tomb
When butterflies dream of the life to come.”
2. ”And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”
3. “And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?”
4. ”Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, -
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?”
5. “As in the soft and sweet eclipse,
When soul meets soul on lover's lips.”
6. “Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery.”
7. "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past."
8. “He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.”
9. “History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.”
10. “I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
when the winds are breathing low,
and the stars are shining bright.”
11. "If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another s; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love."
12. “I love all waste and solitary places.”
13. “In an ocean of dreams without a sound.”
14. “I seem as in a trance, sublime and strange
To muse on my won separate fantasy.”
15. “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.”
16. “Kiss me, so long but as a kiss my live;
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive.”
17. “Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity."
18. "Lift not the painted veil which those who live call Life."
19. “Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds
Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing.”
20. "Man who man would be, must rule the empire of himself."
21. "Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.”
22. "Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."
23. “Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.”
24. “ON a Poet's lips I slept,
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses.”
25. ”Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”
26. "Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life."
27. “Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”
28. “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
29. "Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton."
30. "Reason respects differences, and imagination the similitudes of things."
31. "She stood beside him like a rainbow braided."
32. “Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep -- that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.”
33. “Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”
34. “Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,—where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,—why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?”
35. ”Tell me, Moon, thou pale and gray
Pilgrim of Heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of noght or day
Seekest thou repose now?”
36. “THE AWFUL shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us,—visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,—
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,—
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—
Like memory of music fled,—
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.”
37. “The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume.”
38. “The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.”
39. “The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind . . . .”
40. “The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things, by a law divine,
In one another's being mingle--
Why not I with thine?”
41. “The past Hours weak and gray
With the spoil which their toil
Raked together
From the conquest but One could foil.”
42. “The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.”
43. “The world is weary of the past, oh, might it die or rest at last.”
44. "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."
45. “Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes
To multiply your lovely selves?”
46. "War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade."
47. “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.”
48. “Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being.”
49. “What is Love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves.”
50. “When 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.”
51. “Worlds on worlds are rolling ever / From creation to decay, / Like the bubbles on a river / Sparkling, bursting, borne away. / But they are still immortal / Who, through birth's orient portal / And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight / In the brief dust and light / Gathered around their chariots as they go; / New shapes they still may weave, / New Gods, new laws receive, / Bright or dim are they as the robes they last /On Death's bare ribs had cast.”
