War & Peace Quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley treats “change is certain” less like a bumper-sticker truism than a weather report from history: pressure builds, systems break, and what looks like a clear sky is only a temporary shift in atmosphere. The line’s quiet provocation is its refusal to moralize fluctuation. Peace doesn’t “fail” when it’s followed by disturbance; disturbance is simply the next turn of the wheel. Even the “departure of evil men” is demystified. They don’t exit the stage forever, they circle back, because power, resentment, and opportunism have seasons.

The intent is almost therapeutic, but not soft. Shelley is arguing for a kind of radical sobriety: don’t confuse a lull with salvation, don’t treat relapse as cosmic betrayal. That’s why he frames recurrences as “realities for awareness,” not “occasions for sadness.” Sadness, in his view, is often a symptom of mistaken expectations - the belief that history owes us a straight line.

The subtext is political as much as personal. Writing in the wake of the French Revolution’s promise and backlash, amid Britain’s reactionary clampdowns, Shelley had watched “evil men” return in new uniforms. He distrusts permanence, especially the permanence of victories. Yet he’s not preaching despair. The final phrase, “happy in the interim,” is the sly pivot: happiness becomes an active practice under unstable conditions, not a prize awarded when the world finally behaves. Shelley’s stoic-romantic counsel is to use the interval wisely - to build joy without betting it all on the fantasy of an ending.