708 Quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Can man be free if women be a slave?

The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys: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 mechanised automaton.

From the moment that a man is a soldier, he becomes a slave. He is taught obedience; his will is no longer, which is the most sacred prerogative of man, guided by his own judgment. He is taught to despise human life and human suffering; this is the universal distinction of slaves.

How much longer will man continue to pimp for the gluttony of death, his most insidious, implacable, and eternal foe?

..forgotten lyres, whose dissonant stringsGive various response to each varying blast,To whose frail frame no second motion bringsOne mood or modulation like the last.

True Love in this differs from gold and clay,That to divide is not to take away.Love is like understanding, that grows brightGazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,Imagination! which from earth and sky,And from the depths of human fantasy,As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fillsThe Universe with glorious beams, and killsError, the worm, with many a sun-like arrowOf its reverberated lightning.Epipsychidion

NarrowThe heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,The life that wears, the spirit that createsOne object, and one form, and builds therebyA sepulchre for its eternity.- Epipsychidion

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

The desire of the moth for the star