A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
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

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

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

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

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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


History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
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

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

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

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

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

Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.
Percy Bysshe Shelley