All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
A 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. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
Change 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. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. – 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
Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
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 Shelley
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. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
