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 SHELLEYA man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.
More Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
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Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
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 -
Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, – To the silent wilderness, Where the soul need not repress Its music.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing. A tone Of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
I love tranquil solitude And such society As is quiet, wise, and good.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
When my cats aren’t happy, I’m not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they’re just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.
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I love tranquil solitude.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
Heaven’s ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
Love’s very pain is sweet.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY