Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Percy Bysshe Shelley Poet

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United Kingdom
  • Born: Aug 4, 1792
  • Died: Jul 8, 1822

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by critics as amongst the finest lyric poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

Shelley is perhaps best known for such classic poems as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy. His other major works include long, visionary poems such as Queen Mab, Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonaïs, the unfinished work The Triumph of Life; and the visionary verse dramas The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound.

His close circle of admirers, however, included some progressive thinkers of the day, including his future father-in-law, the philosopher William Godwin.

Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.

Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker.

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

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.

Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.

Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.

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

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.

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

In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.

Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.

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

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

Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

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