Top 400 Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Familiar acts are beautiful through love.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

303. “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

304. “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

305. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

307. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

309. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

311. “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

312. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

314. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

316. “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

317. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

319. “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

320. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

328. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

330. “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed !”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

331. “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

332. “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

333. “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

334. “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

335. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

337. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

339. “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

340. “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

341. “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

342. “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

343. “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

344. “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

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

346. “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

347. “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

348. “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

349. “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

350. “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