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Famous Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

“..forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.”

Vital Musique Ananke

Book:Alastor Or The Spirit Of Solitude

Source: Alastor Or The Spirit Of Solitude

“The change which would be produced by simpler habits on political economy is sufficiently remarkable. The monopolising eater of animal flesh would no longer destroy his constitution by devouring an acre at a meal … The quantity of nutritious vegetable matter consumed in fattening the carcase of an ox, would afford ten times the sustenance, undepraving indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if gathered immediately from the bosom of the earth.”

Animals Efficiency Vegetarianism Veganism Plant Based Diet Food Production Meat Consumption

Book:A Vindication of Natural Diet: Being One in a Series of Notes to Queen Mab

Source: A Vindication of Natural Diet: Being One in a Series of Notes to Queen Mab

“The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and waste of aliment absolutely incapable of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, to any great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural craving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater licence of privilege, by subjection to supernumerary diseases.”

Waste Animals Vegetarianism Veganism Livestock Plant Based Diet Food Production Environmental Impact Meat Consumption Agricultural Land Use

Book:A Vindication of Natural Diet: Being One in a Series of Notes to Queen Mab

Source: A Vindication of Natural Diet: Being One in a Series of Notes to Queen Mab

“If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?”

Atheism Evidence Infallibility

Book:Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

Source: Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, - Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, - mud from a muddy spring, - Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, - A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, - An army, which liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who would wield, - Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; Religion Christless, Godless - A book sealed; A Senate, - Time's worst statue unrepealed, - Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day. - Sonnet: England in 1819”

Government England Monarchy Aristocracy Moral Bankruptcy

Book:Percy Bysshe Shelley: An Anthology

Source: Percy Bysshe Shelley: An Anthology

“I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.”

Snaps Slander Insults Retaliation Disgust

Author:Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Alas! this is not what I thought life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen. In mine own heart I saw as in a glass The hearts of others ... And when I went among my kind, with triple brass Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woeful mass!”

Inspirational Life Lessons Poetry Poetry Quotes Life Reflection

Book:The Complete Poems

Source: The Complete Poems

“Sounds of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain awaken'd flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass”

Percy Shelly To A Skylark

Author:Percy Bysshe Shelley

“What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?”

Percy Shelly To A Skylark

Author:Percy Bysshe Shelley

“tomes / Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance”

Holy Writ

Book:The Major Works

Source: The Major Works

“Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert.”

Poetry Percy Bysshe Shelley Skylark

Author:Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Before we aspire after theoretical perfection in the amelioration of our political state, it is necessary that we possess those advantages which we have been cheated of, and which the experience of modern times has proved that nations even under the present conditions are susceptible.”

Political Perfection Theoretical

Book:The Major Works

Source: The Major Works

“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....”

Woman Seraph

Book:Epipsychidion

Source: Epipsychidion

“(Title: To the Moon) Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,-- And ever-changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?”

Percy Shelly To The Moon

Author:Percy Bysshe Shelley

“One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdain'd For thee to disdain it. One hope too like dispair For prudence to smother, I can give not what men call love: But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And heaven rejects not: The desire of the moth for the star, The devotion of something afar From the sphere of our sorrow?”

Percy Shelly One Word Is Too Often Profaned

Author:Percy Bysshe Shelley

“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.”

Inspirational Writing Imagination Empathy In Writing

Book:A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

Source: A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

“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.”

Soul Death Sleep Eternity

Author:Percy Bysshe Shelley

About the Author

Known for: Author
Quotes: 67

Books & Sources

The Complete PoemsRelated source material

Necessity of Atheism and Other EssaysRelated source material

A Defence of Poetry and Other EssaysRelated source material

A Vindication of Natural Diet: Being One in a Series of Notes to Queen MabRelated source material

Prometheus UnboundRelated source material

The Major WorksRelated source material

AdonaisRelated source material

Percy Bysshe Shelley: An AnthologyRelated source material

Alastor Or The Spirit Of SolitudeRelated source material

EpipsychidionRelated source material