708 Quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:.

The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave.

Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind; The foul cubs like their parents are.

Heaven’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.

First 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.

I know the cause of all human disappointment – worldly prejudice.

A 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.

The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark – now glittering – now reflecting gloom – Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings.

Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food.