Mutability Quotes
More Mutability Quotes
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man Passionless?no, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them, 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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley— 1820 Prometheus Unbound, act 3, sc.4, l.193-204.
What man that sees the ever-whirling wheel Of Change, the which all mortal things doth sway, But that thereby doth find, and plainly feel, How mutability in them doth play Her cruel sports, to many men's decay?
Edmund Spenser— 1609 The Faerie Queen,'Mutability', canto 6, stanza1.
There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.
washington irving— "The Mutabilities of Literature".
Mortal! fear no more, The reign is past of ancient violence; And Jove hath sworn that time shall not deface, Nor death destroy, nor mutability Perplex the truth of love.
hartley coleridge— Sylphs. (Prometheus)
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley— Spirit of the Hour, Act III, sc. iv, l. 200.
"All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three."
jack vance— Chapter 7, "The Manse of Iucounu"
Nought may endure but mutability.
Percy Bysshe Shelley— 1816 'Mutability'.
mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.
joseph addison— No. 162 (5 September 1711).
