Top 400 Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

53. “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

54. “Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

55. “True love in this differs from gold and clay, that to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, gazing on many truths.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

56. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

58. “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

59. “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

60. “Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

64. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

67. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

70. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

72. “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

73. “Deep truth is imageless.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

79. “The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

81. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Veganism

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

86. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

91. “Peace is in the grave.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

93. “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.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

94. “All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

95. “Love’s very pain is sweet.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

96. “Are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar?”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

97. “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.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

98. “Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

99. “Hell is a city much like London.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

100. “A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley