Percy Bysshe Shelley's Quotes

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

Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

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

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

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

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.

Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?