A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.
Meaning of the quote
To be truly good, a person must think deeply and understand things from many different perspectives. They need to imagine what it's like to be someone else and feel the same joys and pains as other people. This way, they can truly connect with and care about the experiences of all humanity.
About Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was an influential English Romantic poet who was not recognized during his lifetime but later became an inspiration for many other poets. He wrote a variety of works, including poems, verse dramas, and political essays, but faced controversies and backlash for his radical views and nonconformist lifestyle.
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More quotes from Percy Bysshe Shelley
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
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.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
When my cats aren’t happy, I’m not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they’re just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
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.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
First our pleasures die – and then our hopes, and then our fears – and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust – and we die too.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
The soul’s joy lies in doing.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid – in which case all comment is superfluous – or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Man’s yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
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.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)
All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
British Romantic poet (1792-1822)