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 Shelley

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Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.
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The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
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And, like a dying lady lean and pale,
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When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - ...
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Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books ar...
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Hail to thee blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest ...
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Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony.
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O, white innocence, That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide Thine awful and serenest...
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Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.
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Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, but leech-like to their fainting country cling, till th...
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A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
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There is a snake in thy smile, my dear, And bitter poison within thy tear.
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Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
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It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
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Monarchy is only the string that ties the robber's bundle.
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And on the pedestal these words appear:

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Look ...
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The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
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There is no sport in hate when all the rage is on one side
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Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts.
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Nothing in the world is single
All things by law divine
In one another's being mingle
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Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast; Cu...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awaken from the dream of life!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but end...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Far clouds of feathery gold, Shaded with deepest purple, gleam Like islands on a dark blue sea...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
... a wild dissolving bliss Over my frame he breathed, approaching near, And bent his eyes of kindli...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
What 'twas weak to do 'Tis weaker to lament, once being done
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Hell is a city much like London A populous and smoky city
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
One word is too often profaned For me to profane it; One feeling too falsely disdain'd For thee to d...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Nought may endure but Mutability.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Who killed Johnny Keats? "I," said the Quarterly, "So savage and tartarly, 'Twas one of my feats
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Teas, Where small talk dies in agonies
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
In friendships I had been most fortunate
Yet never saw I one whom I would call
More willin...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker, so an unsuccessful author turns critic
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy pow...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Fear not for the future, weep not for the past
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know the...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to belie...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Here I swear, and as I break my oath may eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive C...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A dream has power to poison sleep.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within t...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
All Love is sweet. Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ev...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
There is eloquence in the tongueless
wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
No more let life divide what death can join together.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Venice, it's temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the ...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.
We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the pl...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyo...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympat...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
... a wild dissolving bliss Over my frame he breathed, approaching near, And bent his eyes of kind...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Wealth and dominion fade into the mass
Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When onc...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Soul meets soul on lovers lips.
PERCY SHELLEY
We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their faces away.
WALKER PERCY
You can get all A's and still flunk life.
WALKER PERCY
You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual, because in spite of great scientific and techn...
WALKER PERCY
Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing abou...
WALKER PERCY
I travel often, so my routine is always getting scrambled. But on a standard sort of day, I get up a...
BENJAMIN PERCY
What needs to be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past, the past gone and grieved ove...
WALKER PERCY
The priest persuades a humble people to endure their hard lot, a politician urges them to rebel agai...
MAX PERCY
I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern ...
WALKER PERCY
Fertilizer does no good in a heap, but a little spread around works miracles all over.
PERCY ROSS
He who gives while he lives, get to know where it goes.
PERCY ROSS
Many drops make a bucket, many buckets make a pond, many ponds make a lake, and many lakes make an o...
PERCY ROSS
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. T...
WALKER PERCY
Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
WALKER PERCY