A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God’s own heart?

— 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 lest it should not find An echo in another’s mind. While the touch of Nature’s art Harmonizes heart-to-heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:— “I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields;... Awake! Arise! And come away! To the wild woods and the plains, And the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green, and ivy dun Round stems that never kiss the sun: Where the lawns and pastures be, And the sandhill of the sea:— Where the melting hoarfrost wets The daisy-star that never sets, And wind-flowers, and violets, Which yet join not scent to hue, Crown the pale year weak and new; When the night is left behind In the deep east, dun and blind, And the blue noon is over us, And the multitudinous Billows murmur at our feet, Where the earth and ocean meet, And all things seem only one In the universal sun.

— 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.

— 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

Confound the subtlety of lawyers with the subtlety of the law.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Equality in possessions must be the last result of the utmost refinements of civilization; it is one of the conditions of that system of society towards which, with whatever hope of ultimate success, it is our duty to tend.

— Percy Bysshe 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