Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;Custards for supper, and an endless host Of syllabubs and jellies and mince pies, And other such ladylike luxuries.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Venice, it's temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

War is a kind of superstition, the pageantry of arms and badges corrupts the imagination of men.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

We look before and after, And pine for what is not;Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

We look before and after, And pine for what is not:Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear;If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever Should come near.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day. We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free. Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Bought may endure but Mutability!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley