Love Quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley takes a wrecking ball to the two most sanctified contracts of his age: marriage and creed. The line isn’t a dreamy Romantic sigh about feelings; it’s a political argument in lyric clothing. “Love is free” lands like a premise in a courtroom brief, and the rest follows with cold logic: promising “for ever” to love one woman is “absurd” in the same way swearing permanent allegiance to a doctrine is absurd. Both vows demand that a living mind freeze itself in time.

The subtext is Shelley’s hostility to institutions that convert private experience into obedience. He pairs erotic fidelity with religious orthodoxy to show they run on the same machinery: social surveillance, moral debt, and the fear of being cast out. The phrase “excludes us from all inquiry” is the hinge. For Shelley, inquiry isn’t a hobby; it’s the ethical engine of a free person. A vow that forecloses revision doesn’t just risk disappointment, it criminalizes growth.

Context matters: early 19th-century Britain treated marriage as property and religion as a gatekeeping force, both buttressed by law, class, and reputation. Shelley’s own life - scandal, exile, unconventional relationships - sharpened his suspicion of “forever” as a tool of control. The quote works because it refuses sentimentality. It recasts romance as a question of intellectual integrity: if your beliefs must remain examinable, why should your affections be exempt?