“The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?”
Percy Bysshe Shelley“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays“Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”
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“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”
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“The soul's joy lies in doing.”
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“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