Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

25 quotes

Percy Bysshe Shelley, an English poet, is widely remembered for insights that continue to resonate with readers everywhere. Their thinking spans from Poetry to War, revealing a mind that refused to stay in one lane. Browse 31 quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley that cover ground from Poetry, War, Sad, Imagination, and Food. Start here and see if you agree: "Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things."

“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fear

All Quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Money

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry

“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

Food

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry

“Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Age

“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

Hope

“The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Imagination

“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sad

“Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Religion

“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

Beauty

“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

Government

“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

War

“History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

History

“We look before and after, And pine for what is not Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sad

“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

Beauty

“Death is the veil which those who live call life They sleep, and it is lifted.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Death

“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

Change

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Best

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

War

“Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music