Percy Bysshe Shelley citáty

strana 7

„Nebojte se budoucnosti, neplačte nad minulostí.“

„Čím víc se učíme, tím víc odhalujeme svoji nevědomost.“

„Nejjistěji lže ten, kdo pravdu pouze zfalšuje a nevymýšlí si úplnou lež; nejlépe je tu a tam ubrat kousek pravdy a nahradit ždibcem nepravdy.“

„Nikdo není opravdu dobře oblečen, nenosí-li na tváři úsměv.“

„Láska se rodí z okouzlení.“

„Někteří lidé dovedou opravovat jen cizí názory, nikoli vlastní.“

„Systém, který vymyslí velký člověk, nemohou hájit malí lidé, i k tomu je potřebí velkého člověka.“

„V manželství se spíše stydíme projevit manželskou lásku duchovní než tělesnou; před manželstvím ovšem naopak.“

„Básníci jsou neuznávání zákonodárci světa.“

„Velké duchovní vlastnosti málokdy dopomohou manželství ke štěstí, protože zřídka kdy zapůsobí. Zato malé pozornosti a zvyklosti a ústupný rozum jsou základem štěstí.“

„Kdo není stále moudřejší, není ani moudrý.“

„Hlava se věčně mění, dobré srdce málokdy.“

„Ženy čtou v cizím srdci lépe než ve vlastním.“

„Vtipnou lichotku snese i ten nejskromnější.“

„Brzy se i kuchařské umění zdokonalí tak, že kuchař, který peče pstruhy, nebude umět usmažit kapra.“

„Některými věcmi se člověk chlubí, aby se za ně nemusel stydět.“

“Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven,
Although on earth ’tis planted,
Where its honours blow,
While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven
Which die the while they glow.”

“Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure;
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.”

“All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.”

“Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness!
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,
Shunning the light, and owning not its name,
Compelled by its deformity to screen
With flimsy veil of justice and of right
Its unattractive lineaments that scare
All save the brood of ignorance; at once
The cause and the effect of tyranny;
Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile;
Dead to all love but of its abjectness;
With heart impassive by more noble powers
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;
Despising its own miserable being,
Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.”

“Here I swear, and as I break my oath may Infinity Eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge… Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon, to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again — I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.”

“The spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become agricultural: commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be so far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he loved his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare.”

“Teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies.”

“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.”

“If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been, had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India!”

“And others came… Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and GloOms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp; — the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.”

“Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.”

“Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators?”

“There is no God!
This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.”

“We must prove design before we can infer a designer.”

“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.”

“Peace is in the grave.
The grave hides all things beautiful and good.
I am a God and cannot find it there,
Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge,
This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.”

“Rough wind, the moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, —
Wail, for the world's wrong!”

“Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.”

“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.”

“And with glorious triumph, they
Rode through England proud and gay,
Drunk as with intoxication
Of the wine of desolation.”

“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.”

“Poor captive bird! Who, from thy narrow cage,
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody.”

“I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.”

“Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!”

“He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!”

“From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on Chaos.”

“Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”

“I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.”

“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.”