The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Fashion
All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever. They who inspire is most are fortunate, As I am now: but those who feel it most Are happier still.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Love
Among true and real friends, all is common; and were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friend.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Ignorance, World, Envy
Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, — but it returneth.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Change
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Nothing in the world is single; all things by law divine in one spirit mix and mingle. Why not I with thine?
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries live in confidence, equality and unreserve.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Love
Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Reflection, Past, Future
There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Revenge
What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Self-Control, Greatness & Great Things, Discipline
Contemporary criticism only represents the amount of ignorance genius has to contend with.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Criticism
The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Learning
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Topics: Poetry
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
William Wordsworth English Poet
Algernon Charles Swinburne English Poet
William Blake English Poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge English Poet
John Gay English Poet, Dramatist
Edwin Arnold English Poet
Bernard Mandeville Anglo-Dutch Philosopher, Satirist
John Milton English Poet
Elizabeth Barrett Browning English Poet
Christina Rossetti English Poet