Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Percy Bysshe Shelley
212 quotes
“What! alive, and so bold, O earth?”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Written on hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“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 (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Jane. The keen Stars were twinkling; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“You lie—under a mistake, For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Translation of Calderon's Magico Prodigioso, Scene i; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“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 (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must prove design before we can infer a designer.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No man has a right to disturb the public peace, by personally resisting the execution of a law however bad. He ought to acquiesce, using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason, to promote its repeal.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are men and brethren.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been, had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India!”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth, a libel on its possessor.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The king ... like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives Just as his father did; the unconquered powers Of precedent and custom interpose Between a king and virtue.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen; for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights The fairest feelings of the opening heart, Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, And judgment cease to wage unnatural war With passion's unsubduable array.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gold is a living god and rules in scorn, All earthly things but virtue.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The word of God has fenced about all crimes with Holiness.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And man ... no longer now He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, And horribly devours his mangled flesh.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 enquiry.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half the human race to misery.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Should ever a physician be born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he might trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge to sensation.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength, disease into healthfulness: madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities of ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerable evenness of temper, that alone might offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation of society.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable system.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become agricultural: commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be so far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he loved his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some philosophers—and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose... that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert with certainty that we do or do not live after death.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Should it be proved... that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist as soon as those parts change their position with regard to each other.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us; visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower; Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening, Like clouds in starlight widely spread, Like memory of music fled, Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Spirit of , that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom, why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night-wind sent Through strings of some still instrument, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatch'd with me the envious night: They know that never joy illum'd my brow Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, O awful , Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past; there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm, to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A wild dissolving bliss Over my frame he breathed, approaching near, And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can man be free if woman be a slave?”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fear not the future, weep not for the past.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise, we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek, But in our mind? and if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire?”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Me — who am as a nerve o'er which do creep The else unfelt oppressions of this earth, And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth, When all beside was cold: — that thou on me Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony!”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source