Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

Author Image

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Profession : Poet

Birth : August 4, 1792

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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