Words matter. These are the best Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.
History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.
Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
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.
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.
Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.
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.
Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.
The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
The soul’s joy lies in doing.
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.
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.
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.
Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.
O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
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.
Man’s yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.
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 recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
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.
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.
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.
Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.
The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
