The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (399 page)
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Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
1794–1888
What is that fat gentleman in such a passion about?
as a child, on hearing Charles James Fox speak in Parliament
G. W. E. Russell
Collections and Recollections
(1898) ch. 11
1888–1917
I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die.
poem (1916)
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and shout for me.
poem (1916)
1797–1851
I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created.
Frankenstein
(1818) ch. 5
Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!
on her son's education
Matthew Arnold
Essays in Criticism
Second Series (1888) "Shelley"
1792–1822
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
Adonais
(1821) preface
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Adonais
(1821) st. 1
Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year.
Adonais
(1821) st. 18
Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal!
Adonais
(1821) st. 21
A pardlike Spirit, beautiful and swift.
Adonais
(1821) st. 32
He has out-soared 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.
Adonais
(1821) st. 40
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely.
Adonais
(1821) st. 43
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
Adonais
(1821) st. 52
A widow bird sat mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough.
Charles the First
(1822) sc. 5, l. 9
That orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon.
"The Cloud" (1819)
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion.
"Epipsychidion" (1821) l. 149
Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!
Hellas
(1822) l. 682
The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return.
Hellas
(1822) l. 1060
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
"Julian and Maddalo" (1818) l. 57
Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
"Julian and Maddalo" (1818) l. 544
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls.
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Letter to Maria Gisborne" (1820) l. 207
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead—
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.
"Lines: When the lamp" (1824)
Beneath is spread like a green sea
The waveless plain of Lombardy.
"Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills" (1818) l. 90
Sun-girt city, thou hast been
Ocean's child, and then his queen.
of Venice
"Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills" (1818) l. 115
I met Murder on the way—
He had a mask like Castlereagh—
Very smooth he looked, yet grim,
Seven bloodhounds followed him.
"The Mask of Anarchy" (1819) st. 2
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
of "Fraud" [Lord Eldon]
"The Mask of Anarchy" (1819) st. 4
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,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes.
"Ode to the West Wind" (1819) l. 1
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
"Ode to the West Wind" (1819) l. 53
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is.
"Ode to the West Wind" (1819) l. 57
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
"Ode to the West Wind" (1819) l. 70
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.
"Ozymandias" (1819)
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
"Ozymandias" (1819)
Hell is a city much like London.
"Peter Bell the Third" (1819) pt. 3, st. 1
Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
Prometheus Unbound
(1819) act 1, l. 191
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
Prometheus Unbound
(1820) act 1, l. 304
The dust of creeds outworn.
Prometheus Unbound
(1820) act 1, l. 697
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe.
Prometheus Unbound
(1820) act 2, sc. 4, l. 72
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.
Prometheus Unbound
(1820) act 2, sc. 5, l. 72
A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day.
Prometheus Unbound
(1820) act 4, l. 551
How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!
Queen Mab
(1813) canto 1, l. 1
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets.
"The Question" (1822)
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew.
"The Sensitive Plant" (1820) pt. 1, l. 1
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows.
"The Sensitive Plant" (1820) pt. 1, l. 37
Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
"Song" (1824); epigraph to Elgar's Second Symphony
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
"Song to the Men of England" (written 1819)
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king.
of George III
"Sonnet: England in 1819" (written 1819)
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
"To—: Music, when soft voices die" (1824)
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
"To—: One word is too often profaned" (1824)
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert.
"To a Skylark" (1819)
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
"To a Skylark" (1819)
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
"To a Skylark" (1819)
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
"To a Skylark" (1819)
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then—as I am listening now.
"To a Skylark" (1819)
Swiftly walk o'er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
"To Night" (1824)
And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil.
"The Waning Moon" (1824)
A lovely lady, garmented in light
From her own beauty.
"The Witch of Atlas" (written 1820) st. 5
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
A Defence of Poetry
(written 1821)
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
A Defence of Poetry
(written 1821).
Monarchy is only the string that ties the robber's bundle.
A Philosophical View of Reform
(written 1819–20) ch. 2