Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotations

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.

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.

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

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

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

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

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

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.

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.

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!

The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.

All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.

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

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

Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

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

There is no real wealth but the labor of man.

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

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

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.

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

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

Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.

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.

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker.

Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.

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.

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

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.

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.

Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken

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.

Monarchy is only the string that ties the robber's bundle.

Kings are like stars, - they rise and set, they have - The worship of the world, but no repose

Here I swear, and as I break my oath may eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge. Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon; to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again / I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.

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

Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep -- he hath awakened from the dream of life -- 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife.

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, -- but it returneth.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts.

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast; Custards for supper, and an endless host Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, And other such ladylike luxuries

Winter is come and gone,But grief returns with the revolving year.

Who killed Johnny Keats? "I," said the Quarterly, "So savage and tartarly, 'Twas one of my feats

It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.

Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.

Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors.

The sunlight claps the earth And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What are all these kissings worth If thou kiss not me?

What 'twas weak to do 'Tis weaker to lament, once being done

There is no sport in hate when all the rage is on one side

The unquiet republic of the maze of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness

All of us, who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.

They learn in suffering what they teach in song

A sensitive plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, and closed them beneath the kisses of night.

A wild dissolving bliss Over my frame he breathed, approaching near, And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss,

The gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.

All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever. They who inspire is most are fortunate, As I am now: but those who feel it most Are happier still.

It might make one in love with death, to be buried in so sweet a place.

As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker, so an unsuccessful author turns critic

There was no corn -- in the wide market-place all loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold; They weighed it in small scales -- and many a face was fixed in eager horror then; his gold the miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain.

Heaven's ebon vault, studded with stars unutterably bright, through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, seems like a canopy which love has spread to curtain her sleeping world

One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody.

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

Love's very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, - To the silent wilderness, Where the soul need not repress Its music.

I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, when the winds are breathing low, and the stars are shining bright.

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

And Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. 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 pleasure of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

The young moon has fed Her exhausted horn With the sunset's fire.

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear.

Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth!

I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Blessed are those who have preserved internal sanctity of soul; who are conscious of no secret deceit; who are the same in act as they are in desire; who conceal no thought, no tendencies of thought, from their own conscience; who are faithful and sincere witnesses, before the tribunal of their own judgments, of all that passes within their mind. Such as these shall see God.

We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day. We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away; It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free. Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability!

The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom-- Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings.

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.

Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.

When the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven.

Heaven's ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.

A dream has power to poison sleep.

The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being. Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.

The jealous keys of truth's eternal doors.

Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you Ye are many-they are few.

All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.