Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.

The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?

Soul meets soul on lovers lips.

Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.

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

O weep for Adonis - He is dead."
"Peace. He is not dead he doth not sleep - he hath wakened from the dream of life

The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

No more let life divide what death can join together.

God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate.

The being called God...bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar.

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.

I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me- who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, Sweet!

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may last!

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within their own eternity.

There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings far aloft.

A seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman....