Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
"Familiar acts are beautiful through love."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Love)
"Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Death, Life, Sleep)
"Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Men, God, Hope, Earth, May, Suffering)
"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Poetry)
"A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Man)
"Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Change, Men, Peace, Awareness, Departure, Evil, May, Sadness)
"All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Mistakes, Worth, Youth)
"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Darkness, Solitude)
"First our pleasures die - and then our hopes, and then our fears - and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust - and we die too."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Debt, First)
"Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Brother, Crime, Man, Murder, Right)
"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Beauty, Poetry, World)
"Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Beauty, Society, Food, Life, Corruption)
"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Poetry, Moments)
"Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Poetry)
"Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Nature, Fault, Punishment)
"O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?"
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Spring, Wind, Winter)
"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Thought, Songs)
"Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Man, May, Yesterday)
"Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Government, Men, Evil, Vices, Will)
"Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Love, Promise, Vow, Woman)
"Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Money)
"In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Food, Censure, Drama, Hatred, Order, Self)
"If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Spring, Winter)
"I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Arguments, Infinity, Intellect)
"I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Deep, Joy, Taste, Will, Wine)
"History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: History, Time, Man, Memories)
"Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Music, Memory)
"We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Thought, Laughter, Pain, Songs)
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Legislators, Poets, World)
"When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - in which case all comment is superfluous - or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: May, Worth)
"Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Nothing)
"War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: War, Delight, Jest, Trade)
"Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Religion, Selfishness)
"Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Pain, Pleasure, Shadow, Tragedy)
"There is no real wealth but the labor of man."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Wealth, Labor, Man)
"There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!"
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Autumn, Harmony, Sky, Summer)
"The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Pleasure, Sorrow)
"The more we study the more we discover our ignorance."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Ignorance, Study)
"The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Soul, Man)
"The great instrument of moral good is the imagination."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Imagination)
"Soul meets soul on lovers' lips."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Soul, Lovers)
"Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Age, Revenge, Worship)
"The soul's joy lies in doing."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Soul, Joy, Lies)
"When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Care, Cats, Thinking)
"Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Imagination, Reason)