Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

There was a Being whom my spirit oftMet on its visioned wanderings far aloft.A seraph of Heaven, too...

We look before and after, And pine for what is not:Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;O...

You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyo...

Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals its...

Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most he...

If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why shou...

A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.

God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.

IF [GOD] HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?

Before we aspire after theoretical perfection in the amelioration of our political state, it is nece...

War is a kind of superstition, the pageantry of arms and badges corrupts the imagination of men.

Confound the subtlety of lawyers with the subtlety of the law.

Equality in possessions must be the last result of the utmost refinements of civilization; it is one...

And I have fitted up some chambers thereLooking towards the golden Eastern air,And level with the li...

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;And each flower and ...

Alas! this is not what I thought life was.I knew that there were crimes and evil men,Misery and hate...

Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.

Sorrow (A Song)To me this world's a dreary blank,All hopes in life are gone and fled,My high strung ...

In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.

At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece thos...

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;Custards f...

We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.We feel, ...

We look before and after,And pine for what is not;Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Ou...

Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.

Sonnet: Political GreatnessNor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill i...

Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympat...

Ozymandias"I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStan...

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

Joy, joy, joy!Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,And the future is dark, and the presen...

No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.

I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The fu...

And on the pedestal these words appear:'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mi...

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

No more let life divide what death can join together.

The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might ...

And in a mad tranceStrike with our spirit's knifeInvulnerable nothingsWe decayLike corpses in a char...

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; ...

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the ...

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the pl...

I have drunken deep of joy,And I will taste no other wine tonight.

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted

God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in ...

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

Hail to thee blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert That from Heaven or near it Pourest thy full he...

The being called God...bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignora...

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

Man who man would be must rule the empire of himself.

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may last!

Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the cor...

How many a rustic Milton has passed by Stifling the speechless longings of his heart In unremittin...

Venice, it's temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.

History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.

Yes! all is past—swift time has fled away,Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind;How long will ho...

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

There is eloquence in the tonguelesswind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the...

The soul's joy lies in doing.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the i...

See the mountains kiss high HeavenAnd the waves clasp one another;No sister-flower would be forgiven...

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught...

If Winter comes can Spring be far behind?

Reason respects the differences and imagination the similitudes of things.

History is: Fables agreed upon - Voltaire The biography of a few stout and earnest persons - Ralph W...

Soul meets soul on lovers lips.

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express ...

I can give not what men call love;But wilt thou accept notThe worship the heart lifts aboveAnd the h...

First our pleasures die - and then Our hopes and then our fears - and when These are dead the debt...

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil...

If winter comes can spring be far behind?

The fountains mingle with the river,And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever,W...

Jealousy's eyes are green.

In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred it teaches rather self-kn...

It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a Being bey...

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Fear not for the future weep not for the past.

How many a rustic Milton has passed by Stifling the speechless longings of his heart In unremitting...

...Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs— To the silent wilderness Where th...

That orbed maiden with white fire laden Whom mortals call the moon.

I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they ...

I have drunken deep of joy And I will taste no other wine tonight.

See! the mountains kiss high heaven And the waves clasp one another No sister flower would be forg...

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

I arise from dreams of thee,And a spirit in my feetHas led me- who knows how?To thy chamber-window, ...

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the pl...

The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys:Power, like a desolating pestilence,Pollutes whate'...

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such re...

He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert wood...

O weep for Adonis - He is dead." "Peace. He is not dead he doth not sleep - he hath wakened from the...

As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.

The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if ...

Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.

Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.

January grey is here Like a sexton by her grave February bears the bier March with grief doth how...