708 Quotes by 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 scorner of the ground!

Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.

It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower -- and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.

I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.

When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - in which case all comment is superfluous - or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.

All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

Words are but holy as the deeds they cover.

Death will come when thou art dead, soon, too soon.

Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, but leech-like to their fainting country cling, till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, -- a people starved and stabbed in the untilled field...