Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

A man, when he burns, leaves only a handful of ashes. No woman can hold him. The wind must blow him away.

These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

Even Castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually.

Time is not kind to everything.

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; a shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; a flower that dies when it begins to bud; a doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.

To me, beauty and sadness are very closely linked. Truly beautiful things make me sad because I know they are going to fade. When I see a beautiful 20-year-old boy or girl-and they are breathtaking-I am filled with a kind of sadness. But maybe they are beautiful because we know they are not permanent and they are in a kind of transition.

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence. The destruction of Troy. The fall of the petals from fruit trees in blossom. To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence - that is beautiful.

The essence of what makes life beautiful is the fact that it can go away.

But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long preserv'd virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave's a fine and private place, But none I think do there embrace.

As bronze may be much beautified by lying in the dark damp soil, so men who fade in dust of warfare fade fairer, and sorrow blooms their soul.

We are but phantoms ... and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights.

The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies.

Love is like a flower, even the most beautiful kind dies.

Like the lily That once was mistress of the field and flourished, I'll hang my head and perish.

These flowers will be rotten in a couple hours. Birds will crap on them. The smoke here will make them stink, and tomorrow a bulldozer will probably run over them, but for right now they are so beautiful.

There is in this world in which everything wears out, everything perishes, one thing that crumbles into dust, that destroys itself still more completely, leaving behind still fewer traces of itself than Beauty: namely Grief.

Should we put out the light? And then put out the light. But once put out thy light, I cannot give it vital breath again. It needs must wither.

The flowers of life are but illusions. How many fade away and leave no trace.

The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it.

Not only does beauty fade, but it leaves a record upon the face as to what became of it.

Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.

Memory is a tenuous thing, like a rainbow's end or a camera with a failing lens.