If all the thought which had been expended on the construction of engines of agony and death - the modes of aggression and defence, the raising of armies, and the acquirement of those arts of tyranny and falsehood without which mixed multitudes could neither be led nor governed - had been employed to promote the true welfare and extend the real empire of man, how different would have been the present situation of human society!
Percy Bysshe ShelleyPoetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyWhat is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.
Percy Bysshe Shelley