Quotations From PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

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• 21.

  The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. A Defence of Poetry (written 1821, published 1840). This axiom constituted the cornerstone of Shelley's philosophy.
  
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• 22.

  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 (1792-1822), British poet. A Defence of Poetry (written 1821, published 1840).
  
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• 23.

  Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. A Defence of Poetry (written 1821, published 1840).
  
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• 24.

  The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarcely capable of cure.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. A note, in Queen Mab, A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813).
• 25.

  It is impossible that had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders that he could have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. A Vindication of Natural Diet, a note in Queen Mab (1813). Shelley became a vegetarian in 1812, remaining so until his death.
  
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• 26.

  It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. A Defence of Poetry (written 1821, published 1840).
  
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• 27.

  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 (1792-1822), British poet. letter, Jan. 3, 1811.
  
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