The Best Percy Bysshe Shelley quotes

The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. — P B Shelley

Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips. — P B Shelley

When the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; the subject, not the citizen… The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Sometimes it’s better to put love into hugs than to put it into words. Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds Of high resolve; on fancy’s boldest wing. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs,–To the silent wilderness, Where the soul need not repress Its music. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep — that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the heights of love’s rare universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire––I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

O’er Egypt’s land of memory floods are level, And they are thine, O Nile! and well thou knowest The soul–sustaining airs and blasts of evil, And fruits, and poisons spring where’er thou flowest. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love tranquil solitude. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poet’s food is love and fame. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

What is Love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love tranquil solitude And such society As is quiet, wise, and good. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

And bid them love each other and be blest: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest,–for I am Love’s. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

But hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth Are children of one mother, even Love. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Within my heart is the lamp of love, And that is day! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

True love in this differs from gold and clay, that to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, gazing on many truths. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love snow, snow, and all the forms of radiant frost. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Familiar acts are beautiful through love. — P B Shelley

All love is sweet, given or received. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Image of rugged cliffs And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am not much of a hand at love songs, you see I mingle metaphysics with even this, but perhaps in this age of Philosophy that may be excused. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love all waste and solitary places. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. — 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. — P B Shelley

For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; Radiance and odour are not its dower; It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full, It desires what it has not, the beautiful. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

For love and beauty and delight, there is no death nor change. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed,–but it returneth! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fate,time,occasion,chance, and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal love. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

A pard–like spirit, beautiful and swift. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine, In one spirit meet and mingle–Why not I with thine? — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co–eternal with the universe remains unshaken. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The nature of a narrow and malevolent spirit is so essentially incompatible with happiness as to render it inaccessible to the influences of the benignant God. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Know ye what it is to be a child? It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless Art thou let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

And 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. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I Fall upon the thorns of life. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

He hath awakened from the dream of life. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

And many an ante–natal tomb Where butterflies dream of the life to come. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

O weep for Adonis–He is dead.’ ‘Peace. He is not dead he doth not sleep–he hath wakened from the dream of life — Percy Bysshe Shelley

No more let life divide what death can join together. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep–he hath awakened from the dream of life–’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Life, like a dome of many–coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity. — 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. — P B Shelley

Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Those who love not their fellow–beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. — P B Shelley

Necessity, thou mother of the world! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Among true and real friends, all is common; and were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friend. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Kings are like stars,–they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Love’s very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The discussion of any subject is a right that you have brought into the world with your heart and tongue. Resign your heart’s blood before you part with this inestimable privilege of man. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing. A tone Of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

O cease! must hate and death return, Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last! — 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. — P B Shelley

Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am convinced that there can be no regeneration of mankind until laughter is put down. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

What! alive, and so bold, O earth? — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

To hope till hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Through the sunset of hope, Like the shapes of a dream, What paradise islands of glory gleam! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

First our pleasures die–and then our hopes, and then our fears–and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust–and we die too. — P B Shelley

O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you Hope to inherit in the grave below? — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found. — 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

So is Hope Changed for Despair–one laid upon the shelf, We take the other. Under heaven’s high cope Fortune is god–all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Let there be light! Said Liberty , And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love Love––though he has wings, And like light can flee. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets food is love and fame. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead–When the cloud is scattered The rainbow’s glory is shed. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star–showers, thrown. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I love Love–though he has wings, And like light can flee, But above all other things, Spirit, I love thee–Thou art love and life! Oh come, Make once more my heart thy home. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

A sensitive plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan like leaves to the light, and closed them beneath the kisses of night. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

To hearts which near each other move From evening close to morning light,The night is good; because, my love,They never say good–night. — Percy Bysshe Shelley