John Keats Quotes (222 Quotes)

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.

Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty.

My passions are all asleep from my having slumbered till nearly eleven and weakened the animal fiber all over me to a delightful sensation about three degrees on this sight of faintness -- if I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor -- but as I am I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibers of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable frown. Neither poetry, nor ambition, nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me.

I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning - and yet it must be.

A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life - a life like the scriptures- figurative

I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.

O Cynthia, ten-times bright and fair!

Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave, A paradise for a sect the savage too From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep Guesses at Heaven.

Pleasure is oft a visitant but pain Clings cruelly to us.

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing.

The Public - a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run To bend with apples the mossd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has oer-brimmd their clammy cells.

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine - Unweave a rainbow

O what can be done, shall we stay or run?

O then, O then, thou wast a simple name!

'Tis the life of waters:-Ocean
And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark-blue nativeness.

He ne'er is crowned with immortality Who fears to follow where airy voices lead.

Many have original minds who do not think it -- they are led away by custom.

There's a blush for won t, and a blush for shan't, and a blush for having done it There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught, and a blush for just begun it.

Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings.

Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir.

If poetry comes not naturally as leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

'Tis the life of heaven,-the domain
Of Cynthia,-the wide palace of the sun,-
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,-
The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun.

Music's golden tongue Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.

The latest dream I ever dreamed On the cold hill side.

O fond pretence--
For both, for both my love is so immense,
I feel my heart is cut in twain for them.

Let me not think, soft Angel!

You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.

Though man is the only beast that can write, he has small reason to be proud of it. When he utters something that is wise it is nothing that the river horse does not know, and most of his creations are the result of accident.

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.

Thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O thou hast won
A full accomplishment!

Shed no tear O, shed no tear The flower will bloom another year. Weep no more O, weep no more Young buds sleep in the root's white core.

It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.

What occasions the greater part of the world's quarrels Simply this Two minds meet and do not understand each other in time enough to prevent any shock of surprise at the conduct of either party

It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man's life with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of Time.

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.

If I should die', said I to myself, I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.'

Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmasked, and being seen-without a blot!

Why wilt thou affright a feeble soul?

A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

Dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth Oh for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-staind mouth.

Love in a hut, with water and crust, Is Love, forgive uscinders, ashes, dust Love in a palace is perhaps at last More grievous torment than a hermits fast.

Load every rift of your subject with ore.

St. Agnes' Eve - Ah, bitter chill it was The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.

A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no identity - he is continually informing and filling some other body.

The eye of the intellect 'sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing.'

Where are the songs of Spring?

I am fit for nothing but literature.