Poetry Quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poet's food is love and fame.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

— 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

I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets food is love and fame.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“We—are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar; Such difference without discord, as can make Those…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“[Poetry] strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bear the naked and sleeping beauty which is the spirit of…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“I'm... like a poet hidden In the light of thought Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“I can give not what men call love; But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the heavens…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Reading does not occupy me enough: the only relief I find springs from the composition of poetry, which necessitates contemplations that lift…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“ Music, When Soft Voices Die Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields; Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Sonnet: Political Greatness Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame, Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts, Shepherd those herds…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Ozymandias" I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert.…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry Love's Philosophy The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the ocean, The winds of heaven mix for ever…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return: Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever, With a sweet emotion;…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers and terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem to sleep in one another's arms,…

— Percy Bysshe Shelley