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 SHELLEYThe great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
More Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes
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Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.
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War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.
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Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
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Words are but holy as the deeds they cover.
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The howl of self-interest is loud but the heart is black which throbs solely to its note.
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First our pleasures die – and then our hopes, and then our fears – and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust – and we die too.
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Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth.
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The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.
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Sometimes The Devil is a gentleman.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY -
Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.
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I wish no living thing to suffer pain.
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All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
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The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the Year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying.
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I love tranquil solitude.
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Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY