Percy Bysshe Shelley

The more we know, the more we are aware of our ignorance.

Hell is a city much like London—A populous and a smoky city.

The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no one sees it.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

The poet is a mimetic and an imaginative being.

I always go on the principle that a public man has no right to have a private character.

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.

Man is a being of hope and fear.

The highest poetry is the most philosophical.

I have been an ardent lover of liberty, and I have never ceased to be so.

The most glorious moment in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel a challenge to life, and like a phoenix, rise from the ashes.

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.

The world is a divine dream, from which we may awake into a diviner reality.

Love, like a lamp, illuminates the interior of the heart.

The strongest and most lasting affections are those which are founded on mutual esteem.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

I have no respect for the public, and I have no fear of it.

The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket.

The universe is a machine for the production of good.