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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 Of The Human Race To Misery.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Chastity Is A Monkish

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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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 Of The Human Race To Misery.

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Sing Again, With Your Dear Voice Revealing. A Tone Of Some World Far From Ours, Where Music And Moonlight And Feeling Are One.

This Lake Exceeds Anything I Ever Beheld In Beauty.

Love, From Its Awful Throne Of Patient Power In The Wise Heart, From The Last Giddy Hour Of Dread Endurance, From The Slippery, Steep, And Narrow Verge Of Crag-like Agony, Springs And Folds Over The World Its Healing Wings.

I Am Convinced That There Can Be No Regeneration Of Mankind Until Laughter Is Put Down.

The Pale Stars Are Gone! For The Sun, Their Swift Shepherd, To Their Folds Them Compelling, In The Depths Of The Dawn, Hastes, In Meteor-eclipsing Array, And The Flee Beyond His Blue Dwelling, As Fawns Flee The Leopard.

O Cease! Must Hate And Death Return, Cease! Must Men Kill And Die? Cease! Drain Not To Its Dregs The Urn Of Bitter Prophecy. The World Is Weary Of The Past, Oh, Might It Die Or Rest At Last!

O'er Egypt's Land Of Memory Floods Are Level, And They Are Thine, O Nile! And Well Thou Knowest The Soul-sustaining Airs And Blasts Of Evil, And Fruits, And Poisons Spring Where'er Thou Flowest.

There Is A Harmony In Autumn, And A Luster In Its Sky...

Man Is Of Soul And Body, Formed For Deeds Of High Resolve; On Fancy's Boldest Wing.

Within My Heart Is The Lamp Of Love, And That Is Day!

The Great Community Of Mankind Had Been Subdivided Into Ten Thousand Communities, Each Organized For The Ruin Of The Other.

Before Man Can Be Free, And Equal, And Truly Wise, He Must Cast Aside The Chains Of Habit And Superstition; He Must Strip Sensuality Of Its Pomp, And Selfishness Of Its Excuses, And Contemplate Actions And Objects As They Really Are.

O Heart, And Mind, And Thoughts! What Thing Do You Hope To Inherit In The Grave Below?

The Mind In Creation Is As A Fading Coal, Which Some Invisible Influence, Like An Inconstant Wind, Awakens To Transitory Brightness; This Power Arises From Within...could This Influence Be Durable In Its Original Purity And Force, It Is Impossible To Predict The Greatness Of The Result; But When Composition Begins, Inspiration Is Already On The Decline; And The Most Glorious Poetry That Has Been Communicated To The World Is Probably A Feeble Shadow Of The Original Conceptions Of The Poet.

The Jealous Keys Of Truth's Eternal Doors.

Poets Are The Hierophants Of An Unapprehended Inspiration; The Mirrors Of The Gigantic Shadows Which Futurity Casts Upon The Present.

Thou Art Justice Ne'er For Gold May Thy Righteous Laws Be Sold As Laws Are In England Thou Shield'st Alike The High And Low.

The Thoughts Which The Word "god" Suggests To The Human Mind Are Susceptible Of As Many Variations As Human Minds Themselves.

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.

Thou Who Didst Waken From His Summer Dreams The Blue Mediterranean, Where He Lay, Lull'd By The Coil Of His Crystalline Streams Beside A Pumice Isle In Baiæ's Bay, And Saw In Sleep Old Palaces And Towers Quivering Within The Wave's Intenser Day, All Overgrown With Azure Moss And Flowers So Sweet, The Sense Faints Picturing Them.

Our Adonais Has Drunk Poisonoh! What Deaf And Viperous Murderer Could Crown Life's Early Cup With Such A Draught Of Woe?

That Orbed Maiden, With White Fire Laden, Whom Mortals Call The Moon.

Revenge Is The Naked Idol Of The Worship Of A Semi-barbarous Age.

And Priests Dare Babble Of A God Of Peace, Even Whilst Their Hands Are Red With Guiltless Blood, Murdering The While, Uprooting Every Germ Of Truth, Exterminating, Spoiling All, Making The Earth A Slaughter - House!

At The Very Time That Philosophers Of The Most Enterprising Benevolence Were Founding In Greece Those Institutions Which Have Rendered It The Wonder And Luminary Of The World, Am I Required To Believe That The Weak And Wicked King Of An Obscure And Barbarous Nation, A Murderer, A Traitor And A Tyrant, Was The Man After God's Own Heart?

The World's Great Age Begins Anew, The Golden Years Return, The Earth Doth Like A Snake Renew Her Winter Weeds Outworn; Heaven Smiles, And Faiths And Empires Gleam, Like Wrecks Of A Dissolving Dream.

The Cloud Of Mind Is Discharging Its Collected Lightning.

I Was An Infant When My Mother Went To See An Atheist Burned. She Took Me There. The Dark-robed Priests Were Met Around The Pile; The Multitude Was Gazing Silently; And As The Culprit Passed With Dauntless Mien, Tempered Disdain In His Unaltering Eye, Mixed With A Quiet Smile, Shone Calmly Forth; The Thirsty Fire Crept Round His Manly Limbs; His Resolute Eyes Were Scorched To Blindness Soon; His Death-pang Rent My Heart! The Insensate Mob Uttered A Cry Of Triumph, And I Wept. Weep Not, Child! Cried My Mother, For That Man Has Said, 'there Is No God.'

Life, Like A Dome Of Many-coloured Glass, Stains The White Radiance Of Eternity.

God Is A Hypothesis, And, As Such, Stands In Need Of Proof; The Onus Probandi Rests On The Theist.

Peace, Peace! He Is Not Dead, He Doth Not Sleep - He Hath Awakened From The Dream Of Life - 'tis We, Who Lost In Stormy Visions, Keep With Phantoms An Unprofitable Strife.

...what Are Numbers Knit By Force Or Custom? Man Who Man Would Be, Must Rule The Empire Of Himself; In It Must Be Supreme, Establishing His Throne On Vanquished Will, Quelling The Anarchy Of Hopes And Fears, Being Himself Alone.

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.

If A Person's Religious Ideas Correspond Not With Your Own, Love Him Nevertheless

Know What It Is To Be A Child? It Is To Be Something Very Different From The Man Of Today. It Is To Have A Spirit Yet Streaming From The Waters Of Baptism; It Is To Believe In Belief; It Is To Be So Little That Elves Can Reach To Whisper In Your Ear; It Is To Turn Pumpkins Into Coaches, And Mice Into Horses, Lowness Into Loftiness, And Nothing Into Everything, For Each Child Had Its Fairy Godmother In Its Soul.

It Is Our Will That Thus Enchains Us To Permitted Ill. We Might Be Otherwise, We Might Be All We Dream Of Happy, High, Majestical. Where Is The Love, Beauty And Truth We Seek, But In Our Mind? And If We Were Not Weak, Should We Be Less In Deed Than In Desire?

The Moon Of Mahomet Arose, And It Shall Set; While, Blazoned As On Heaven's Immortal Noon, The Cross Leads Generations On.

All Love Is Sweet Given Or Returned. Common As Light Is Love, And Its Familiar Voice Wearies Not Ever.

I Fall Upon The Thorns Of Life.

History Is A Cyclic Poem Written By Time Upon The Memories Of Man.

Familiar Acts Are Beautiful Through Love.

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.

... Virtue Owns A More Eternal Foe Than Force Or Fraud: Old Custom, Legal Crime, And Bloody Faith The Foulest Birth Of Time.

Better Than All Measures Of Delightful Sound, Better Than All Treasures That In Books Are Found, Thy Skill To Poet Were, Thou Scorner Of The Ground!

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

In A Drama Of The Highest Order There Is Little Food For Censure Or Hatred; It Teaches Rather Self-knowledge And Self-respect.

In The Firm Expectation That When London Shall Be A Habitation Of Bitterns, When St. Paul And Westminster Abbey Shall Stand Shapeless And Nameless Ruins In The Midst Of An Unpeopled Marsh, When The Piers Of Waterloo Bridge Shall Become The Nuclei Of Islets Of Reeds And Osiers, And Cast The Jagged Shadows Of Their Broken Arches On The Solitary Stream, Some Transatlantic Commentator Will Be Weighing In The Scales Of Some New And Now Unimagined System Of Criticism The Respective Merits Of The Bells And The Fudges And Their Historians.

A Christian, A Deist, A Turk, And A Jew, Have Equal Rights: They Are Men And Brethren.

For This Is The Most Civil Sort Of Lie That Can Be Given To A Man's Face. I Now Say What I Think.

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.

I Have Made My Bed In Charnels And On Coffins, Where Black Death Keeps Record Of The Trophies Won

Reason Respects The Differences, And Imagination The Similitudes Of Things.

Sounds Of Vernal Showers On The Twinkling Grass, Rain Awaken'd Flowers, All That Ever Was Joyous, And Clear, And Fresh, Thy Music Doth Surpass

How Beautiful Is Sunset When The Glow Of Heaven Descends Upon A Land Like Thee, Thou Paradise Of Exiles, Italy!

All High Poetry Is Infinite; It Is As The First Acorn, Which Contained All Oaks Potentially.

Lost Echo Sits Amid The Voiceless Mountains, And Feeds Her Grief.

When The Lamp Is Shattered The Light In The Dust Lies Dead - When The Cloud Is Scattered The Rainbow's Glory Is Shed.

If Certain Critics Were As Clearsighted As They Are Malignant, How Great Would Be The Benefit To Be Derived From Their Writings!

Near That A Dusty Paint-box, Some Odd Hooks, A Half-burnt Match, An Ivory Block, Three Books, Where Conic Sections, Spherics, Logarithms, To Great Laplace, From Saunderson And Sims, Lie Heaped In Their Harmonious Disarray Of Figures,-disentangle Them Who May.

Dust To The Dust! But The Pure Spirit Shall Flow Back To The Burning Fountain Whence It Came, A Portion Of The Eternal.

I Have Been A Wanderer Among Distant Fields. I Have Sailed Down Mighty Rivers.

If He Is Infinitely Good, What Reason Should We Have To Fear Him? If He Is Infinitely Wise, What Doubts Should We Have Concerning Our Future? If He Knows All, Why Warn Him Of Our Needs And Fatigue Him With Our Prayers? If He Is Everywhere, Why Erect Temples To Him? If He Is Just, Why Fear That He Will Punish The Creatures That He Has Filled With Weaknesses?

As Belief Is A Passion Of The Mind, No Degree Of Criminality Is Attachable To Disbelief.

Lightning My Pilot Sits; In A Cavern Under Is Fettered The Thunder, It Struggles And Howls At Fits; Over Earth And Ocean, With Gentle Motion, This Pilot Is Guiding Me, Lured By The Love Of The Genii That Move In The Depths Of The Purple Sea; Over The Rills, And The Crags, And The Hills, Over The Lakes And The Plains, Wherever He Dream, Under Mountain Or Stream The Spirit He Loves Remains; And I All The While Bask In Heaven's Blue Smile, Whilst He Is Dissolving In Rains.

Concerning God, Freewill And Destiny: Of All That Earth Has Been Or Yet May Be, All That Vain Men Imagine Or Believe, Or Hope Can Paint Or Suffering May Achieve, We Descanted.

We Live And Move And Think; But We Are Not The Creators Of Our Own Origin And Existence. We Are Not The Arbiters Of Every Motion Of Our Own Complicated Nature; We Are Not The Masters Of Our Own Imaginations And Moods Of Mental Being.

Peace Is In The Grave.

One Word Is Too Often Profaned For Me To Profane It, One Feeling Too Falsely Disdained For Thee To Disdain It.

I Wish No Living Thing To Suffer Pain.

The Breath Of Accusation Kills An Innocent Name, And Leaves For Lame Acquittal The Poor Life, Which Is A Mask Without It.

No More Let Life Divide What Death Can Join Together.

Joy, Once Lost, Is Pain

Nothing Of Him That Doth Fade But Doth Suffer A Sea-change Into Something Rich And Strange

The Howl Of Self-interest Is Loud ... But The Heart Is Black Which Throbs Solely To Its Note.

What Is Love? It Is That Powerful Attraction Towards All That We Conceive, Or Fear, Or Hope Beyond Ourselves.

A Man, To Be Greatly Good, Must Imagine Intensely And Comprehensively; He Must Put Himself In The Place Of Another And Of Many Others; The Pains And Pleasures Of His Species Must Become His Own.

Love Withers Under Constraints: Its Very Essence Is Liberty: It Is Compatible Neither With Obedience, Jealousy, Nor Fear.

New Relationship

I Love Love -- Though He Has Wings, And Like Light Can Flee.

What If English Toil And Blood Was Poured Forth, Even As A Flood? It Availed, Oh, Liberty, To Dim, But Not Extinguish Thee.

God Is Represented As Infinite, Eternal, Incomprehensible; He Is Contained Under Every Predicate In Non That The Logic Of Ignorance Could Fabricate.

[l]ike Thee To Those In Sorrow, Comes To Bid A Sweet Good-morrow To The Rough Year Just Awake In Its Cradle On The Brake. The Brightest Hour Of Unborn Spring, Through The Winter Wandering, Found, It Seems, The Halcyon Morn To Hoar February Born.

The Great Secret Of Morals Is Love; Or A Going Out Of Our Nature, And An Identification Of Ourselves With The Beautiful Which Exists In Thought, Action, Or Person, Not Our Own. A Man, To Be Greatly Good, Must Imagine Intensely And Comprehensively; He Must Put Himself In The Place Of Another And Of Many Others; The Pains And Pleasure Of His Species Must Become His Own. The Great Instrument Of Moral Good Is The Imagination.

Is It Not Odd That The Only Generous Person I Ever Knew, Who Had Money To Be Generous With, Should Be A Stockbroker.

This Is Heaven, When Pain And Evil Cease, And When The Benignant Principle, Untrammelled And Uncontrolled, Visits In The Fulness Of Its Power The Universal Frame Of Things.

Whence Are We, And Why Are We? Of What Scene The Actors Or Spectators?

I Have Drunken Deep Of Joy, And I Will Taste No Other Wine Tonight.

I Cannot Endure The Horror, The Evil, Which Comes To Self In Solitude.

Soul Meets Soul On Lovers' Lips.

When A Man Marries, Dies, Or Turns Hindu, His Best Friends Hear No More Of Him.

Poetry Is A Mirror Which Makes Beautiful That Which Is Distorted.

Sometimes It's Better To Put Love Into Hugs Than To Put It Into Words. Soul Meets Soul On Lovers' Lips.

Every Man, In Proportion To His Virtue, Considers Himself, With Respect To The Great Community Of Mankind, As The Steward And Guardian Of Their Interests In The Property Which He Chances To Possess. Every Man, In Proportion To His Wisdom, Sees The Manner In Which It Is His Duty To Employ The Resources Which The Consent Of Mankind Has Intrusted To His Discretion.

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.

Spirit Of Beauty, That Dost Consecrate With Thine Own Hues All Thou Dost Shine Upon Of Human Thought Or Form, Where Art Thou Gone? Why Dost Thou Pass Away And Leave Our State, This Dim Vast Vale Of Tears, Vacant And Desolate? Ask Why The Sunlight Not For Ever Weaves Rainbows O'er Yon Mountain-river, Why Aught Should Fail And Fade That Once Is Shown, Why Fear And Dream And Death And Birth Cast On The Daylight Of This Earth Such Gloom, Why Man Has Such A Scope For Love And Hate, Despondency And Hope?

He Gave Man Speech, And Speech Created Thought, Which Is The Measure Of The Universe.

Chameleons Feed On Light And Air: Poets Food Is Love And Fame.

O Weep For Adonis - He Is Dead." "peace. He Is Not Dead He Doth Not Sleep - He Hath Wakened From The Dream Of Life

For Love And Beauty And Delight, There Is No Death Nor Change.

The Soul's Joy Lies In Doing.

There Is No Disease, Bodily Or Mental, Which Adoption Of Vegetable Diet, And Pure Water Has Not Infallibly Mitigated, Wherever The Experiment Has Been Fairly Tried.

But Hope Will Make Thee Young, For Hope And Youth Are Children Of One Mother, Even Love.

What Is Life? Thoughts And Feelings Arise, With Or Without Our Will, And We Employ Words To Express Them. We Are Born, And Our Birth Is Unremembered And Our Infancy Remembered But In Fragments. We Live On, And In Living We Lose The Apprehension Of Life. How Vain Is It To Think That Words Can Penetrate The Mystery Of Our Being. Rightly Used They May Make Evident Our Ignorance Of Ourselves, And This Is Much.

Drive My Dead Thoughts Over The Universe Like Withered Leaves To Quicken A New Birth! And, By The Incantation Of This Verse, Scatter, As From An Unextinguished Hearth Ashes And Sparks, My Words Among Mankind! Be Through My Lips To Unawakened Earth The Trumpet Of A Prophecy! O, Wind, If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind?

Poet's Food Is Love And Fame.

For There Are Deeds Which Have No Form, Sufferings Which Have No Tongue.

Swiftly Walk O'er The Western Wave, Spirit Of Night! Out Of The Misty Eastern Cave, Where, All The Long And Lone Daylight, Thou Wovest Dreams Of Joyand Fear, Which Make Thee Terrible And Dear, Swift Be Thy Flight!

Until The Mind Can Love, And Admire, And Trust, And Hope, And Endure, Reasoned Principles Of Moral Conduct Are Seeds Cast Upon The Highway Of Life Which The Unconscious Passenger Tramples Into Dust.

Design Must Be Proved Before A Designer Can Be Inferred.

I Pant, I Sink, I Tremble, I Expire!

I Silently Laugh At My Own Cenotaph, And Out Of The Caverns Of Rain, Like A Child From The Womb, Like A Ghost From The Tomb, I Arise And Unbuild It Again.

The Emptiness And Folly Of Retaliation Are Apparent From Every Example Which Can Be Brought Forward. Not Only Jesus Christ, But The Most Eminent Professors Of Every Sect Of Philosophy, Have Reasoned Against This Futile Superstition.

Some Say That Gleams Of A Remoter World Visit The Soul In Sleep That Death Is Slumber, And That Its Shapes The Busy Thoughts Outnumber Of Those Who Wake And Live.

All Spirits Are Enslaved Which Serve Things Evil

Positive Atheism

(title: To The Moon) Art Thou Pale For Weariness Of Climbing Heaven, And Gazing On The Earth, Wandering Companionless Among The Stars That Have A Different Birth,-- And Ever-changing, Like A Joyless Eye That Finds No Object Worth Its Constancy?

In The Infancy Of Society Every Author Is Necessarily A Poet

The More We Study The More We Discover Our Ignorance.

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.

The Splendors Of The Firmament Of Time May Be Eclipsed, But Are Extinguished Not; Like Stars To Their Appointed Height They Climb And Death Is A Low Mist Which Cannot Blot The Brightness It May Veil.

Music, When Soft Voices Die, Vibrates In The Memory; Odors, When Sweet Violets Sicken, Live Within The Sense They Quicken.

The Quick Dreams, The Passion-winged Ministers Of Thought.

Necessity, Thou Mother Of The World!

How Wonderful Is Death! Death And His Brother Sleep.

The Beauty Of The Internal Nature Cannot Be So Far Concealed By Its Accidental Vesture, But That The Spirit Of Its Form Shall Communicate Itself To The Very Disguise And Indicate The Shape It Hides From The Manner In Which It Is Worn. A Majestic Form And Graceful Motions Will Express Themselves Through The Most Barbarous And Tasteless Costume.

Majestic Beauty

One Word Is Too Often Profaned For Me To Profane It, One Feeling Too Falsely Disdain'd For Thee To Disdain It. One Hope Too Like Dispair For Prudence To Smother, I Can Give Not What Men Call Love: But Wilt Thou Accept Not The Worship The Heart Lifts Above And Heaven Rejects Not: The Desire Of The Moth For The Star, The Devotion Of Something Afar From The Sphere Of Our Sorrow?

The Babe Is At Peace Within The Womb, The Corpse Is At Rest Within The Tomb. We Begin In What We End.

One Nightingale In An Interfluous Wood Satiate The Hungry Dark With Melody.

O Wild West Wind, Thou Breath Of Autumn's Being. Thou, From Whose Unseen Presence The Leaves Dead Are Driven, Like Ghosts From An Enchanter Fleeing.

Duty And Dereliction Guide Thee Back To Solitude.

Every Fanatic Or Enemy Of Virtue Is Not At Liberty To Misrepresent The Greatest Geniuses And Most Heroic Defenders Of All That Is Valuable In This Mortal World.

A Poet Is A Nightingale, Who Sits In Darkness And Sings To Cheer Its Own Solitude With Sweet Sounds.

Man Who Man Would Be, Must Rule The Empire Of Himself.

Rise Like Lions After Slumber In Unvanquishable Number- Shake Your Chains To Earth Like Dew Which In Sleep Had Fallen On You Ye Are Many-they Are Few.

Thou Shoreless Flood, Which In Thy Ebb And Flow Claspest The Limits Of Mortality.

Narrow The Heart That Loves, The Brain That Contemplates, The Life That Wears, The Spirit That Creates One Object, And One Form, And Builds Thereby A Sepulchre For Its Eternity.

... 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

Deep Truth Is Imageless.

The Cloud Shadows Of Midnight Possess Their Own Repose.

Thy Words Are Like A Cloud Of Winged Snakes.

Can Man Be Free If Woman Be A Slave?

Poets Are The Unacknowledged Legislators Of The World.

Let The Advocate Of Animal Food, Force Himself To A Decisive Experiment On Its Fitness, And As Plutarch Recommends, Tear A Living Lamb With His Teeth, And Plunging His Head Into Its Vitals, Slake His Thirst With The Steaming Blood; When Fresh From The Deed Of Horror Let Him Revert To The Irresistible Instincts Of Nature That Would Rise In Judgment Against It, And Say, Nature Formed Me For Such Work As This. Then, And Then Only, Would He Be Consistent.

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.

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.

Far Clouds Of Feathery Gold, Shaded With Deepest Purple, Gleam Like Islands On A Dark Blue Sea.

Where Is Perfection? Where I Cannot Reach.

Death Is The Veil Which Those Who Live Call Life; They Sleep, And It Is Lifted.

I Love Tranquil Solitude, And Such Society As Is Quiet, Wise, And Good; Between Thee And Me What Difference? But Thou Dost Possess The Things I Seek, Not Love Them Less.

Sometimes The Devil Is A Gentleman.

The Same Means That Have Supported Every Other Popular Belief Have Supported Christianity. War, Imprisonment, And Falsehood; Deeds Of Unexampled And Incomparable Atrocity Have Made It What It Is.

It Is Among Men Of Genius And Science That Atheism Alone Is Found.

In Fact, Truth Cannot Be Communicated Until It Is Perceived.

Senseless Is The Breast And Cold Which Relenting Love Would Fold; Bloodless Are The Veins And Chill Which The Pulse Of Pain Did Fill; Every Little Living Nerve That From Bitter Words Did Swerve Round The Tortur'd Lips And Brow, Are Like Sapless Leaflets Now Frozen Upon December's Bough.

Away, Away, From Men And Towns, To The Wild Wood And The Downs, - To The Silent Wilderness, Where The Soul Need Not Repress Its Music.

Poetry Is Not Like Reasoning, A Power To Be Exerted According To The Determination Of The Will. A Man Cannot Say, 'i Will Compose Poetry.' The Greatest Poet Even Cannot Say It; For The Mind In Creation Is As A Fading Coal, Which Some Invisible Influence, Like An Inconstant Wind, Awakens To Transitory Brightness...and The Conscious Portions Of Our Natures Are Unprophetic Either Of Its Approach Or Its Departure.

Contemporary Criticism Only Represents The Amount Of Ignorance Genius Has To Contend With. . . . Time Will Reverse The Judgement Of The Vulgar.

Fear Not For The Future, Weep Not For The Past.

To Suffer Woes Which Hope Thinks Infinite; To Forgive Wrongs Darker Than Death Or Night; To Defy Power, Which Seems Omnipotent; To Love, And Bear; To Hope Till Hope Creates From It's Own Wreck The Thing It Contemplates; Neither To Change, Not 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

Poetry, In A General Sense, May Be Defined To Be 'the Expression Of The Imagination': And Poetry Is Connate With The Origin Of Man.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, And Endurance, These Are The Seals Of That Most Firm Assurance Which Bars The Pit Over Destruction's Strength; And If, With Infirm Hand, Eternity, Mother Of Many Acts And Hours, Should Free The Serpent That Would Clasp Her With His Length; These Are The Spells By Which To Reassume An Empire O'er The Disentangled Doom.

Those Who Love Not Their Fellow-beings Live Unfruitful Lives, And Prepare For Their Old Age A Miserable Grave.

The Crime Of Inquiry Is One Which Religion Never Has Forgiven.

Jesus Christ Opposed With Earnest Eloquence The Panic Fears And Hateful Superstitions Which Have Enslaved Mankind For Ages.

Ah! What A Divine Religion Might Be Found Out If Charity Were Really Made The Principle Of It Instead Of Faith.

The Encomium Of One Incapable Of Flattery Is Indeed Flattering.

A System Could Not Well Have Been Devised More Studiously Hostile To Human Happiness Than Marriage.

Less Oft Peace In Shelley's Mind, Than Calm In Waters Seen.

Thou Hast A Voice, Great Mountain, To Repeal. Large Codes Of Fraud And Woe; Not Understood By All, But Which The Wise, And Great, And Good Interpret, Or Make Felt, Or Deeply Feel.

Thou Demandest What Is Love? It Is That Powerful Attraction Towards All That We Conceive, Or Fear, Or Hope Beyond Ourselves, When We Find Within Our Own Thoughts The Chasm Of An Insufficient Void, And Seek To Awaken In All Things That Are, A Community With What We Experience Within Ourselves.

I Love Tranquil Solitude.

Cold Hopes Swarm Like Worms Within Our Living Clay.

Dar'st Thou Amid The Varied Multitude To Live Alone, An Isolated Thing?

Forget The Dead, The Past? O Yet There Are Ghosts That May Take Revenge For It, Memories That Make The Heart A Tomb, Regrets Which Gild Thro’ The Spirit’s Gloom, And With Ghastly Whispers Tell That Joy, Once Lost, Is Pain.

I Stood Within The City Disinterred; And Heard The Autumnal Leaves Like Light Footfalls Of Spirits Passng Through The Streets; And Heard The Mountain's Slumberous Voice At Intervals Thrill Through Those Roofless Halls; The Oracular Thunder Penetrating Shook The Listening Soul In My Suspended Blood.

Nature Rejects The Monarch, Not The Man; The Subject, Not The Citizen... The Man Of Virtuous Soul Commands Not, Nor Obeys.

There Is No Sport In Hate Where All The Rage Is On One Side.

So Soon As This Want Or Power [of Love] Is Dead, Man Becomes The Living Sepulchre Of Himself, And What Yet Survives Is The Mere Husk Of What Once He Was.

Till The Future Dares Forget The Past, His Fate And Fame Shall Be An Echo And A Light Unto Eternity!

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.

And The Rose Like A Nymph To The Bath Addrest, Which Unveiled The Depth Of Her Glowing Breast, Till, Fold After Fold, To The Fainting Air, The Soul Of Her Beauty And Love Lay Bare.

Death Will Come When Thou Art Dead, Soon, Too Soon.

Obedience Indeed Is Only The Pitiful And Cowardly Egotism Of Him Who Thinks That He Can Do Something Better Than Reason.

There Is No Real Wealth But The Labour Of Man.

We Are All Greeks. Our Laws, Our Literature, Our Religion, Our Arts, Have Their Root In Greece.

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.

Vegetarian Diet

Whatever Strengthens And Purifies The Affections, Enlarges The Imagination, And Adds Spirit To Sense, Is Useful.

I Know The Cause Of All Human Disappointment -- Worldly Prejudice.

Underneath Day's Azure Eyes, Ocean's Nursling, Venice Lies, A Peopled Labyrinth Of Walls, Amphitrite's Destined Halls

There Is No Real Wealth But The Labour Of Man. Were The Mountains Of Gold And The Valleys Of Silver, The World Would Not Be One Grain Of Corn The Richer; No One Comfort Would Be Added To The Human Race.

Poetry Is A Sword Of Lightning, Ever Unsheathed, Which Consumes The Scabbard That Would Contain It.

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.

Are We Not Formed, As Notes Of Music Are, For One Another, Though Dissimilar?

Mont Blanc Yet Gleams On High: The Power Is There, The Still And Solemn Power Of Many Sights And Many Sounds, And Much Of Life And Death. In The Long Glare Of Day, The Snows Descend Upon That Mountain; None Beholds Them There, Nor When The Flakes Burn In The Sinking Sun, Or The Sunbeams Dart Through Them.

Worse Than Despair, Worse Than The Bitterness Of Death, Is Hope.

Then Black Despair, The Shadow Of A Starless Night, Was Thrown Over The World In Which I Moved Alone.

Not The Swart Pariah In Some Indian Grove, Lone, Lean, And Hunted By His Brother's Hate, Hath Drunk So Deep The Cup Of Bitter Fate As That Poor Wretch Who Cannot, Cannot Love: He Bears A Load Which Nothing Can Remove, A Killing, Withering Weight.

The Good Want Power, But To Weep Barren Tears. The Powerful Goodness Want: Worse Need For Them. The Wise Want Love; And Those Who Love Want Wisdom.

When A Thing Is Said To Be Not Worth Refuting You May Be Sure That Either It Is Flagrantly Stupid - In Which Case All Comment Is Superfluous - Or It Is Something Formidable, The Very Crux Of The Problem.

It Is Not A Merit To Tolerate, But Rather A Crime To Be Intolerant.

I Love Snow, Snow, And All The Forms Of Radiant Frost.

Life And The World, Or Whatever We Call That Which We Are And Feel, Is An Astonishing Thing. The Mist Of Familiarity Obscures From Us The Wonder Of Our Being. We Are Struck With Admiration At Some Of Its Transient Modifications, But It Is Itself The Great Miracle.

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Brandon Sanderson

J. Edgar Hoover

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