Quotes from Percy Bysshe Shelley

Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.

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.

Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.

For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.

Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.

When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him.

It is among men of genius and science that atheism alone is found.

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.

Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay you low?

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men.

Ere Babylon was dust, The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the garden, That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

The discussion of any subject is a right that you have brought into the world with your heart and tongue. Resign your heart's blood before you part with this inestimable privilege of man.

A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are men and brethren.

In proportion as a man is selfish, so far has he receded from the motive which constitutes virtue.

Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow.

Can man be free if woman be a slave?

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave, A dupe and a deceiver! a decay, A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.

Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, And heaven with slaves!

The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and waste of aliment absolutely incapable of calculation

But hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth Are children of one mother, even Love.

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.

Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.

Are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar?

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing. A tone Of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one.