Quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley

About Percy Bysshe Shelley:

Percy Bysshe Shelley is regarded by some as among the finest lyric, as well as epic, poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. T...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

There was a Being whom my spirit oft Met on its visioned wanderings far aloft. A seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

No more let life divide what death can join together.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

And in a mad trance Strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings We decay Like corpses in a charnel Fear & Grief Convulse is & consume us Day by day And cold hopes swarm Like worms within Our living clay

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley

If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect t...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fi...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and b...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley

You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to b...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

And on the pedestal these words appear:
 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
 The lone and level sands stret...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well ...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within t...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Author Bio

  • NamePercy Bysshe Shelley
  • DescriptionEnglish Romantic poet
  • BornAugust 4, 1792
  • DiedJuly 8, 1822
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionLinguist; Poet; Translator; Writer; Playwright; Novelist