Top 400 Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 9

51. “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

52. “It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

53. “Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

54. “Sow seed – but let no tyrant reap; Find wealth – let no imposter heap; Weave robes – let not the idle wear; Forge arms – in your defence to bear.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

56. “Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

57. “Death will come when thou art dead, soon, too soon.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

58. “I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

59. “Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

60. “Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

62. “The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

63. “Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

64. “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!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

65. “I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

67. “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.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

68. “Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

69. “Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

70. “Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, And feeds her grief.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

71. “Let there be light! Said Liberty, And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

72. “The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

73. “It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments by medicine, than to prevent them by regimen.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

74. “How beautiful is sunset when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

75. “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.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

76. “Deep truth is imageless.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

77. “Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

78. “I wish no living thing to suffer pain.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

79. “Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay you low?”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

80. “The nature of a narrow and malevolent spirit is so essentially incompatible with happiness as to render it inaccessible to the influences of the benignant God.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

81. “Man’s yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

82. “Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

83. “The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

84. “God is a hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof; the onus probandi rests on the theist.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

85. “Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

86. “Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

87. “I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams...”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

88. “The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

89. “Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone. But grief returns with the revolving year.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

91. “Power, like a desolating pestilence, pollutes whatever it touches.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

92. “That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

94. “Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

95. “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.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

96. “How wonderful is death! Death and his brother sleep.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

98. “Underneath Day’s azure eyes, Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite’s destined halls.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

99. “The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

100. “Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley