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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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Percy Bysshe Shelley
Age: 29 †
Born: 1792
Born: August 4
Died: 1822
Died: July 8
Linguist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Percy Byssche Shelley
Percy Shelley
Shelli Persi Bish
Makes
Touches
Truth
Frame
Power
Slaves
Pollutes
Human
Obedience
Automaton
Humans
Slave
Mechanized
Men
Genius
Whate
Like
Virtue
Pestilence
Freedom
Bane

More quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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He has outsoared the shadow of our night envy and calumny and hate and pain, and that unrest which men miscall delight, can touch him not and torture not again from the contagion of the world's slow stain, he is secure.
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For love and beauty and delight, there is no death nor change.
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Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights The fairest feelings of the opening heart, Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, And judgment cease to wage unnatural war With passion's unsubduable array.
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O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb
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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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Know ye what it is to be a child? It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief.
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As long as skies are blue, and fields are green Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow
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Yes, marriage is hateful, detestable. A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequited fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.
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I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.
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I love tranquil solitude And such society As is quiet, wise, and good.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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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.
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In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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January gray is here, like a sexton by her grave February bears the bier, march with grief doth howl and rave, and April weeps -- but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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But hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth Are children of one mother, even Love.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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The advocates of literal interpretation have been the most efficacious enemies of those doctrines whose nature they profess to venerate.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Dar'st thou amid the varied multitude To live alone, an isolated thing?
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I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Has led me- who knows how? To thy chamber-window, Sweet!
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Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
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Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.
Percy Bysshe Shelley