Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes About Atheism

Quotes about: Atheism

• It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Atheist, Creating, Religion

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, G. Cuningham (1860). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: With Notes”, p.119

• Christianity indeed has equaled Judaism in the atrocities, and exceeded it in the extent of its desolation. Eleven millions of men, women, and children have been killed in battle, butchered in their sleep, burned to death at public festivals of sacrifice, poisoned, tortured, assassinated, and pillaged in the spirit of the Religion of Peace, and for the glory of the most merciful God.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Religious, Children, Sleep

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Homer, Euripides, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1929). “The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”

• If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

• It is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from generation to generation) that whole peoples adore the God of their fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and custom with them take the place of conviction or of proofs: they prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers taught them to prostrate themselves and pray: but why did their fathers fall on their knees?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Father, Fall, Atheism

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2015). “The Necessity of Atheism”, p.8, Booklassic

• Here I swear, and as I break my oath may ... eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge... Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon; to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again - I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Crush, Revenge, Feelings

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1964). “Shelley in England”

• When you can discover where the fresh colors of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to himself.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Flower, Color, Broken

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1814, Delphi Classics

• And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
  Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,
  Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
  Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
  Making the earth a slaughter - house!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Blood, Hands, House

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1829). “The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Complete in One Volume”

• Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Love, Atheism, Principles

• It is among men of genius and science that atheism alone is found.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Men, Religion, Atheism

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Richard Herne Shepherd (1810). “The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley ... Ed. ... by Richard Herne Shepherd”, p.326

• Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, And heaven with slaves!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Men, Heaven, Religion

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.12

• As belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Passion, Mind, Atheism

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.26

• Had this author [Sir W Drummond Academical Questions, chap. iii.], instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Guilt, Atheism, Modesty

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2015). “The Necessity of Atheism”, p.12, Booklassic

• I was an infant when my mother went To see an atheist burned. She took me there. The dark-robed priests were met around the pile; The multitude was gazing silently; And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth; The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs; His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon; His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. Weep not, child! cried my mother, for that man Has said, 'There is no God.'

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Mother, Atheist, Children

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2004). “The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.429, JHU Press

• It is thus that the generality of mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attributes to the Divinity, not only the unusual effects which strike them, but moreover the most simple events, of which the causes are the most simple to understand by whomever is able to study them. In a word, man has always respected unknown causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the imaginary colossus of the Divinity.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Ignorance, Simple, Men

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2015). “The Necessity of Atheism”, p.7, Booklassic

• Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Character, Being Positive, Atheism

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1820, Delphi Classics

• In fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Atheist, Atheism, Facts

  "Selected Essays on Atheism".

• Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Atheist, Passion, Eye

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1810, Delphi Classics

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