Percy Bysshe Shelley

"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds."

"Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim."

"Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted."

"Familiar acts are beautiful through love."

"O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

"Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves."

"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."

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

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

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

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

"Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness."

"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."