John Keats Quotes

Failure is in a sense the highway to success inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true and very fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.
John Keats
I have met with women who I really think would like to be married to a poem and to be given away by a novel.
John Keats
There is a budding tomorrow in midnight.
John Keats
To Sorrow I bade good-morrow And thought to leave her far away behind But cheerly cheerly She loves me dearly: She is so constant to me and so kind.
John Keats
Soft closer of our eyes! Low murmur of tender lullabies!
John Keats
A drainless shower of light is poesy 'tis the supreme of power 'tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.
John Keats
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings Conquer all mysteries by rule and line Empty the haunted air the gnomed mine -Unweave a rainbow.
John Keats
There is a budding morrow in midnight.
John Keats
A drainless shower of light is poesy 'tis the supreme of power 'tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.
John Keats
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings Conquer all mysteries by rule and line Empty the haunted air the gnomed mine -Unweave a rainbow.
John Keats
There is a budding morrow in midnight.
John Keats
Love in a hut with water and a crust Is - Love forgive us! - cinders ashes dust.
John Keats
A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it.
John Keats
Oh for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts.
John Keats
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
John Keats
I wish to believe in immortality - I wish to live with you forever.
John Keats
The imagination of a boy is healthy and the mature imagination of a man is healthy but there is a space of life between in which the soul is in ferment the character undecided the way of life uncertain.
John Keats
Ever let the Fancy roam Pleasure never is at home.
John Keats
A thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases it will never Pass into nothingness.
John Keats
I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion I have shudder'd at it. I shudder no more. I could be martyr'd for my religion Love is my religion And I could die for that. I could die for you.
John Keats
Failure ... is in a sense the highway to success inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.
John Keats
Beauty is truth truth beauty.
John Keats
Beauty is truth - truth beauty - that is all Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
John Keats
The excellence of every art is its intensity capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.
John Keats
I have a habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am now leading a posthumous existence.
John Keats
Call the world, if you please, "the Vale of Soul Making". Then you will find out the use of the world....There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions -- but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.Intelligences are atoms of perception -- they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God. How then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them -- so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence. How, but in the medium of a world like this?This point I sincerely wish to consider, because I think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion -- or rather it is a system of Spirit Creation...I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive -- and yet I think I perceive it -- that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible. I will call the world a school instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read. I will call the human heart the hornbook used in that school. And I will call the child able to read, the soul made from that school and its hornbook.Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways....As various as the lives of men are -- so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, souls, identical souls of the sparks of his own essence.This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of salvation which does not affront our reason and humanity...
John Keats
Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die.
John Keats
But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy waysI cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
John Keats
To Sleep"O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities.Then save me, or the passed day will shineUpon my pillow, breeding many woes,— Save me from curious Conscience, that still lordsIts strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.
John Keats
Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.
John Keats
Think of my Pleasure in Solitude, in comparison of my commerce with the world - there I am a child - there they do not know me not even my most intimate acquaintance - I give into their feelings as though I were refraining from irritating a little child - Some think me middling, others silly, other foolish - every one thinks he sees my weak side against my will; when in thruth it is with my will - I am content to be thought all this because I have in my own breast so graet a resource. This is one great reason why they like me so; because they can all show to advantage in a room, and eclipese from a certain tact one who is reckoned to be a good Poet - I hope I am not here playing tricks 'to make the angels weep': I think not: for I have not the least contempt for my species; and though it may sound paradoxical: my greatest elevations of Soul leave me every time more humbled - Enough of this - though in your Love for me you will not think it enough.
John Keats
I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource.
John Keats
I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter.
John Keats
And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun/ And she forgot the blue above the trees,/ And she forgot the dells where waters run,/ And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;/ She had no knowledge when the day was done,/ And the new morn she saw not: but in peace/ Hung over her sweet basil evermore,/ And moisten'd it with tears unto the core.
John Keats
That men, who might have tower'd in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been content to let occasion die,Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium.
John Keats
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile madeThe tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade
John Keats
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breedsAlong the pebbled shore of memory!Many old rotten-timber'd boats there beUpon thy vaporous bosom, magnifiedTo goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry.
John Keats
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,What can I do to kill it and be free?
John Keats
Touch has a memory.
John Keats
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?---"On death
John Keats
I have clungtTo nothing, lov’d a nothing, nothing seentOr felt but a great dream!
John Keats
Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.
John Keats
My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk
John Keats
I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
John Keats
Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.
John Keats
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moors--No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,And so live ever--or else swoon to death. Glanzvoller Stern! wär ich so stet wie du,Nicht hing ich nachts in einsam stolzer Pracht!SchautŽ nicht mit ewigem Blick beiseite zu,Einsiedler der Natur, auf hoher WachtBeim Priesterwerk der Reinigung, das die See,Die wogende, vollbringt am Meeresstrand;Noch starrt ich auf die Maske, die der SchneeSanft fallend frisch um Berg und Moore band.Nein, doch unwandelbar und unentwegtMöchtŽ ruhn ich an der Liebsten weicher Brust,Zu fühlen, wie es wogend dort sich regt,Zu wachen ewig in unruhiger Lust,Zu lauschen auf des Atems sanftes Wehen -So ewig leben - sonst im Tod vergehen!
John Keats
Scenery is fine -but human nature is finer
John Keats
The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mindabout nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.
John Keats
I have good reason to be content,for thank God I can read andperhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.
John Keats
But this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination’s struggles, far and nigh,All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence. -Keats, EndymionThis is the ‘goal’ of the soul path – to feel existence; not to overcome life’s struggles and anxieties, but to know life first hand, to exist fully in context. (Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul, p.260)
John Keats
O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, Would all their colours from the sunset take.
John Keats
Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.
John Keats
My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you … I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you.
John Keats
The same that oft-times hath charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.
John Keats
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thoughtAs doth eternity...
John Keats
No one can usurp the heights...But those to whom the miseries of the worldAre misery, and will not let them rest.
John Keats
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.
John Keats
I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving: O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving.
John Keats
Open wide the mind's cage-door,She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
John Keats
Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes.
John Keats