10 Great Quotes About Poets and Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

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

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves.”

“All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially.”

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

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

“A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”

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

“I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.”

“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.”

—Percy Bysshe Shelley