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Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes (1792-1822)
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About Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 β 8 July 1822) was one of the major English romantic poets, widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets in the English language; husband of Mary Shelley.
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βThe lone couch of his everlasting sleep.β
βThe quick Dreams,
The passion-winged Ministers of thought.β
The passion-winged Ministers of thought.β
βRevenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.β
β... why God made irreconcilable
Good and the means of good.β
Good and the means of good.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Percy Bysshe Shelley quotes by topic.
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Love 11 quotes
View all 11 quotes on Love →Percy Bysshe Shelley on Poetry about love 8 quotes
View all 8 quotes on Poetry about love →Percy Bysshe Shelley on Flowers 8 quotes
βThere grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Grave (burial) 5 quotes
βThe lone couch of his everlasting sleep.β
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Percy Bysshe Shelley on Hope 5 quotes
View all 5 quotes on Hope →Percy Bysshe Shelley on Change 4 quotes
βNought may endure but Mutability.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Clouds 4 quotes
View all 4 quotes on Clouds →Percy Bysshe Shelley on Thought 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Thought →Percy Bysshe Shelley on Despair 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Despair →Percy Bysshe Shelley on Sleep 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Sleep →Percy Bysshe Shelley on Moon 3 quotes
βThe young moon has fed Her exhausted horn With the sunset's fire.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Idolatry 3 quotes
βRevenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.β
What Percy Bysshe Shelley Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Percy Bysshe Shelley shared regarding contemporaries.
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh
βI met Murder on the wayβ He had a mask like Castlereaghββ
Percy Bysshe Shelley on George Washington
β'Twas his ambition, generous and great A life to life's great end to consecrate.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on William Shakespeare
βAs divinest Shakespeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light, Like omniscient power, which he Imaged 'mid mortality.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Lucan
βI have also read the four first books of Lucan's Pharsalia, a poem as it appears to me of wonderful genius and transcending Virgil.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Dante Alighieri
βHis very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with the lightning which has yet found no conductor.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Horace Smith
βIs it not odd that the only truly generous person I ever knew who had money enough to be generous with should be a stockbroker? He writes poetry and pastoral dramas and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on William Wordsworth
βWhat a beastly and pitiful wretch that Wordsworth! That such a man should be such a poet! I can compare him with no one but Simonides, that flatterer of the Sicilian tyrants, and at the same time the most natural and tender of lyric poets.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Homer
βThe poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses: the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations.β
Percy Bysshe Shelley on William Godwin
βIt is now a period of more than two years since first I saw your inestimable book of Political Justice. It opened to my mind fresh and more extensive views; it materially influenced my character, and I rose from its perusal a wiser and a better man. I was no longer the votary of romance; till then I had existed in an ideal worldβnow I found that in this universe of ours was enough to excite the interest of the heart, enough to employ the discussions of reason; I beheld, in short, that I had duties to perform. Conceive the effect which the Political Justice would have upon a mind before jealous of its independence, participating somewhat singularly in a peculiar susceptibility.β
Quotes About Percy Bysshe Shelley
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Percy Bysshe Shelley from others.
Claribel AlegrΓa on Percy Bysshe Shelley
βpoetry, as Percy Shelley observed, is like a great river into which thousands of tributaries flow.β
Paula Gunn Allen Interview on Percy Bysshe Shelley
βThe other people that I was simply made for were the Romantic poets. Shelley, in particular, and Keats.β
Lord Amberley on Percy Bysshe Shelley
Harold Bloom on Percy Bysshe Shelley 3 quotes
βShelley is a unique poet, one of the most original in the language, and he is in many ways the poet proper, as much so as any in the language. His poetry is autonomous, finely wrought, in the highest degree imaginative, and has the spiritual form of vision stripped of all veils and ideological coverings, the vision many readers justly seek in poetry, despite the admonitions of a multitude of churchwardenly critics.β
Thomas Carlyle on Percy Bysshe Shelley
βPoor soul, he has always seemed to me an extremely weak creature, and lamentable much more than admirable. Weak in genius, weak in character (for these two always go together); a poor thin, spasmodic, hectic, shrill and pallid being; -- one of those unfortunates, of whom I often speak, to whom the 'talent of silence', first of all, has been denied. The speech of such is never good for much. Poor Shelley, there is something void and Hades-like in the whole inner-world of him; his universe is all vacant azure, hung with a few frosty mournful if beautiful stars; the very voice of him (his style &c), shrill, shrieky, to my ear has too much of the ghost!β
T. S. Eliot on Percy Bysshe Shelley
βThe ideas of Shelley seem to me always to be ideas of adolescenceβas there is every reason why they should be. And an enthusiasm for Shelley seems to me also to be an affair of adolescence: for most of us, Shelley has marked an intense period before maturity, but for how many does Shelley remain the companion of age? I confess that I never open the volume of his poems simply because I want to read poetry, but only with some special reason for reference. I find his ideas repellent; and the difficulty of separating Shelley from his ideas and beliefs is still greater than with Wordsworth. And the biographical interest which Shelley has always excited makes it difficult to read the poetry without remembering the man: and the man was humourless, pedantic, self-centred, and sometimes almost a blackguard.β
Millicent Fawcett on Percy Bysshe Shelley
βThe torch which was lighted by Mary Wollstonecraft was never afterwards extinguished; there are glimpses of its light in the poems of her son-in-law Shelley. The frequent references to the principle of equality between men and women in the Revolt of Islam will occur to every reader.β
Paul Foot on Percy Bysshe Shelley
Emma Goldman on Percy Bysshe Shelley
βEmotional sorrow has inspired many sublime lyrics, much profound insight and poetic exultation of a Byron, Shelley, Heine, and their kind.β
J. B. S. Haldane on Percy Bysshe Shelley
βNow if we want poets to interpret physical science as Milton and Shelley did (Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up-to-date in their chemical knowledge), we must see that our possible poets are instructed, as their masters were, in science and economics.β
Benjamin Haydon on Percy Bysshe Shelley
βIn a few minutes Shelley opened the conversation by saying in the most feminine and gentle voice, "As to that detestable religion, the Christianββ" I looked astounded, but casting a glance round the table easily saw by ββ's expression of ecstasy and the women's simper, I was to be set at that evening vi et armis. No reply, however, was made to this sally during dinner, but when the dessert came and the servant was gone to it we went like fiends. ββ and ββ were deists. I felt exactly like a stag at bay and resolved to gore without mercy. Shelley said the Mosaic and Christian dispensations were inconsistent. I swore they were not, and that the Ten Commandments had been the foundation of all the codes of law in the earth. Shelley denied it.β
William Hazlitt on Percy Bysshe Shelley
βThe author of the Prometheus Unbound...has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic. He is sanguine-complexioned, and shrill-voiced. As is often observable in the case of religious enthusiasts, there is a slenderness of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match for the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears to take no strong hold of things, does not grapple with the world about him, but slides from it like a river.β
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Percy Bysshe Shelley
βChange 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.β
About Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 β 8 July 1822) was one of the major English romantic poets, widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets in the English language; husband of Mary Shelley.