Date: w. 1821, 1840

"Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which it resembles."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"It begins at the imagination and the intellect as at the core, and distributes itself thence as a paralyzing venom, through the affections into the very appetites, until all become a torpid mass in which hardly sense survives."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

Poetry "reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)