254 quotes
We know not what we do
When we speak words.
The silver key of the fountain of tears.
A wild dissolving bliss
Over my frame he breathed, approaching near,
And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness
Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss.
The Revolt of Islam (1817)
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow.
Adonais (1821)
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
Adonais (1821)
Peter was dull; he was at first
Dull,—oh so dull, so very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed,
Still with this dulness was he cursed!
Dull,—beyond all conception, dull.
Peter Bell the Third (1819)
I love Love — though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee —
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.
Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou (1821)
What is Freedom? — ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well —
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.
The Masque of Anarchy (1819)
Human pride
Is skilful to invent most serious names
To hide its ignorance.
The name of God
Has fenced about all crime with holiness.
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.
A Defence of Poetry (1821)
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.
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 the human race to misery.
Queen Mab (1813)
It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.
Queen Mab (1813)
Jesus Christ represented God as the principle of all good, the source of all happiness, the wise and benevolent Creator and Preserver of all living things. But the interpreters of his doctrines have confounded the good and the evil principle.
To that high Capital, where kingly Death
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came.
Adonais (1821)
O that my spirit were yon heaven of night,
Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes.
Sun-girt City, thou hast been
Ocean's child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey.
Lines Written among the Euganean Hills (1818)
Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.
The Masque of Anarchy (1819)
Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might.
Ode to the West Wind (1819)
We must prove design before we can infer a designer.
The Necessity of Atheism (1811)