Top 400 Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 6 of 9

251. “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

252. “Where is perfection? Where I cannot reach.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

254. “Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

255. “Teas, Where small talk dies in agonies.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

261. “It is not a merit to tolerate, but rather a crime to be intolerant.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

262. “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

263. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

265. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

268. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

271. “Lord Byron doesn’t have a life plan. He doesn’t have a day plan. I once found a note that he wrote to himself that said: ’put on pants.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— 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. “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

277. “Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

279. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

281. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

286. “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

287. “Jealousy’s eyes are green.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

288. “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

289. “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

290. “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

291. “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

292. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

295. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

297. “Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

298. “I have drunken deep of joy...”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

300. “No one has yet been found resolute enough in dogmatizing to deny that Nature made man equal; that society has destroyed this equality is a truth not more incontrovertible.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley