Quotes by Percy Shelley


Percy Bysshe Shelley
(August 4, 1792 – July 8, 1822)
was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets in the English language.

Our sweetest songs

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

— Percy Shelley

pine for what is not

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

— Percy Shelley

Tragedy delights

Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.

— Percy Shelley

The pleasure that is in sorrow

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

— Percy Shelley

Poetry lifts the veil

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

— Percy Shelley

Poetry is a mirror

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

— Percy Shelley