Top 400 Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

252. “A story of particular facts is a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which it distorts.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

253. “Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may last!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

254. “The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

255. “The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

256. “Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind; The foul cubs like their parents are.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

257. “I know the cause of all human disappointment – worldly prejudice.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

258. “A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are men and brethren.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

259. “Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, And heaven with slaves!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

261. “Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude To live alone, an isolated thing?”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

262. “We know not what we do When we speak words.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

263. “Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

264. “He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

265. “Look on yonder earth: The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, harmony and love. The universe, In Nature’s silent eloquence, declares That all fulfil the works of love and joy, – All but the outcast, Man.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

266. “Everytime we say that god is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was caused by the forces of nature.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

267. “Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower – and this is.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

268. “One wandering thought pollutes the day;.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

269. “Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

270. “Where art thou, beloved To-morrow? When young and old, and strong and weak, Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow, Thy sweet smiles we ever seek, – In thy place – ah! well-a-day! We find the thing we fled – To-day!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

271. “Lie bills and calculations much perplexed, With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

272. “The splendors of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

273. “What is Love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

274. “What do you think? Young women of rank eat – you will never guess what – garlick!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

275. “Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

276. “I know The past and thence I will essay to glean A warning for the future, so that man May profit by his errors, and derive Experience from his folly; For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

277. “Image of rugged cliffs And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

278. “Forget the dead, the past? O yet there are ghosts that may take revenge for it, memories that make the heart a tomb, regrets which gild thro’ the spirit’s gloom, and with ghastly whispers tell that joy, once lost, is pain.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

279. “Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

280. “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.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

281. “Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this dim world That the pale name of priest might shrink and dwindle Into the Hell from which it first was furled.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

282. “O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you Hope to inherit in the grave below?”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

283. “Poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

284. “Jealousy’s eyes are green.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

285. “But hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth Are children of one mother, even Love.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

286. “Our Adonais has drunk poisonoh! What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

287. “Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow claspest the limits of mortality.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

288. “Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

289. “The advocates of literal interpretation have been the most efficacious enemies of those doctrines whose nature they profess to venerate.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

290. “A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

291. “There is no real wealth but the labor of people. Were the mountains of gold and silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

292. “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.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

293. “There is no sport in hate where all the rage Is on one side.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

294. “The young moon has fed Her exhausted horn With the sunset’s fire.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

295. “Yes, marriage is hateful, detestable. A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequited fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

296. “I have drunken deep of joy...”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

297. “Necessity, thou mother of the world!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

298. “Persevere even though Hell and destruction should yawn beneath your feet.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

299. “The flood of time is rolling on; We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone To glide in peace down death’s mysterious stream. Have ye done well?”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

300. “Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and instruct others, be they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his attempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccomplished purpose have been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the dust of oblivion upon his efforts; the pile they raise will betray his grave which might otherwise have been unknown.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley