Top 400 Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “What if English toil and blood Was poured forth, even as a flood? It availed, Oh, Liberty, To dim, but not extinguish thee.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

302. “I love all waste and solitary places.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

303. “And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade, All disguised, even to the eyes, Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

304. “We live and move and think; but we are not the creators of our own origin and existence. We are not the arbiters of every motion of our own complicated nature; we are not the masters of our own imaginations and moods of mental being.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

305. “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

306. “Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove, Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother’s hate, Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love: He bears a load which nothing can remove, A killing, withering weight.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

307. “By all that is sacred in our hope for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

308. “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

309. “Peter was dull; he was at first Dull; – Oh, so dull – so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed – Still with his dulness was he cursed – Dull -beyond all conception – dull.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

310. “War is a kind of superstition, the pageantry of arms and badges corrupts the imagination of men.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

311. “I love Love – though he has wings, And like light can flee.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

312. “Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

313. “No man has a right to disturb the public peace, by personally resisting the execution of a law however bad. He ought to acquiesce, using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason, to promote its repeal.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

314. “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

315. “The thoughts which the word “God” suggests to the human mind are susceptible of as many variations as human minds themselves.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

316. “Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

317. “In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

318. “Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something better than reason.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

319. “Man, who wert once a despot and a slave, A dupe and a deceiver! a decay, A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

320. “There is a harmony In autumn, and a luster in its sky...”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

322. “Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights The fairest feelings of the opening heart, Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, And judgment cease to wage unnatural war With passion’s unsubduable array.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

324. “It is impossible that had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders that he could have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

325. “My neighbour, or my servant, or my child, has done me an injury, and it is just that he should suffer an injury in return. Such is the doctrine which Jesus Christ summoned his whole resources of persuasion to oppose.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

326. “And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air, The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

327. “Love! dearest, sweetest power! how much are we indebted to thee! How much superior are even thy miseries to the pleasures which arise from other sources!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

328. “I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

329. “Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow: they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and the redeemer, Time.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

330. “Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

331. “Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes – are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

332. “You would not easily guess All the modes of distress Which torture the tenants of earth; And the various evils, Which like so many devils, Attend the poor souls from their birth.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

333. “Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

334. “Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

335. “That sweet sleep which medicines all pain.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

336. “The practice of utter sincerity towards other men would avail to no good end, if they were incapable of practising it towards their own minds. In fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

337. “The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward. Not only Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

338. “The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarcely capable of cure.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

339. “The same means that have supported every other popular belief have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

340. “No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

341. “When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid – in which case all comment is superfluous – or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

342. “I cannot endure the horror, the evil, which comes to self in solitude.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

343. “You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

344. “Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

345. “If certain Critics were as clearsighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their writings!”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

346. “Thou art Justice ne’er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold As laws are in England thou Shield’st alike the high and low.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

347. “I had rather not have any more of my hopes and illusions mocked by sad realities.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

348. “There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet, and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

349. “In proportion as a man is selfish, so far has he receded from the motive which constitutes virtue.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

350. “O’er Egypt’s land of memory floods are level, And they are thine, O Nile! and well thou knowest The soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil, And fruits, and poisons spring where’er thou flowest.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley