John Keats Quotes:

Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. 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 afterwards carefully avoid.

Topics: Cheer, Failure, Errors, Positive Experiences

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.

source: - Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 24 September 1819, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 2, p. 213

Topics: Inspirational, Mean, Science, Open Mindedness, Strengthening

You are always new, the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.

Topics: Kissing, Teenage Love, Lasts, Love Is Hard, Kissing And Love

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.

source: - Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 19 March 1819, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 2, p. 81

Topics: Positive, Happiness, Real, Experiencing Things, Wisdom And Experience

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.

source: - Endymion bk. 1, l. 1 (1818)

Topics: Life, Beauty, Famous Love, Beautiful Nature, Definition Of Beauty

We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

Topics: Book, Gone, Steps, Experiencing Things, Fine Things

My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.

source: - John Keats (2002). “Selected Letters”, p.311, Oxford University Press, USA

Topics: Selfish, Love Is, Breathe

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Topics: Spiritual, Sweet, Philosophy, Spiritual Music, Odes

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

Topics: Beauty, Misunderstood

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.

Topics: Imagination, Atheism, Literature, Monasteries

You are always new. The last of your kisses was even the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest.

source: - John Keats (2002). “Selected Letters”, p.340, Oxford University Press, USA

Topics: Best Friend, Kissing, Movement, Bright Star

Love is my religion - I could die for it.

Topics: Love, Passion, Romance, Martyred, Love Literature

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.

source: - Letter to Benjamin Bailey, 22 Nov. 1817

Topics: Inspirational, Truth, Lying, Nothing But The Truth, Imagination And Dreams

Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?

Topics: Life, Depression, Wisdom, Feeling Depressed

I have so much of you in my heart.

source: - John Keats (2009). “Selected Letters of John Keats: Revised Edition”, p.313, Harvard University Press

Topics: Heart, Adoption, My Heart, Lyric Poetry

was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep?

Topics: Love, Dream, Sleep, Adieu, Tender Is The Night

If poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, then it better not come at all.

Topics: Inspirational, Learning, Tree, Bright Star

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

Topics: Love, Marriage, Summer, Summer Inspirational, Summer Love

Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.

Topics: Food, Book, Wine, Fine Wine, Great Wine

With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

Topics: Beauty, Overcoming, Poet, Consideration For Others

Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.

Topics: Human Nature, Fine, Scenery

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

Topics: Writing, Poetry, Soul, Poetry By Famous Poets

Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes.

Topics: Eye, Bored, Pensive

Dancing music, music sad, Both together, sane and mad…

Topics: Dancing, Mad, Together

Health is my expected heaven.

Topics: Health, Heaven, Expected

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

Topics: Fear, Voice, Immortality, Airy, Immortal Soul

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.

source: - John Keats, Helen Vendler (1990). “Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard”, p.140, Harvard University Press

Topics: Flower, Sleep, Winter, Impermanence, Another Year

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.

source: - Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 19 February 1819, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 2, p. 67

Topics: Life, Eye, Men, Allegory

The creature has a purpose, and his eyes are bright with it.

Topics: Eye, His Eyes, Purpose

There is a budding morrow in midnight.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Midnight

it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

Topics: Mean, Men, Doubt

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!

Topics: Sweet, Gone

O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Climbing

Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight; With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings.

Topics: Sweet, Wings, White, Peas, Sweet Peas

Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success...

Topics: Highways

It ought to come like the leaves to the trees, or it better not come at all.

Topics: Tree

We have woven a web, you and I, attached to this world but a separate world of our own invention.

Topics: Woven, World, Invention

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

Topics: Pain, Pleasure, Pain And Pleasure

I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.

Topics: Wish, Arms, Thunder

Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu

Topics: Hands, Joy, Bidding, Adieu

Like a mermaid in sea-weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest.

Topics: Weed, Dream, Sea, Chilly

Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately, and do all you can to console me in it — make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me —write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair.

Topics: Writing, Kissing, Poppies, Draught, Bright Star

--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Topics: I Love You, Thinking, World, I Stand Alone

O aching time! O moments big as years!

Topics: Time, Years, Moments

When the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.

Topics: Morning, Flower, Fall, Green Hills

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion-- I have shuddered at it, I shudder no more. I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion and I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet.

Topics: Love, Romantic, Men, Martyred, Cheesy Love

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Topics: Love, Life, Beauty

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Topics: Happiness, Beauty, Nature

I want a brighter word than bright

Topics: Want

Life is but a day: A fragile dewdrop on its perilious way From a tree's summit

Topics: Tree, Way, Life Is

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence.

Topics: Winter, Silence, Frost, Winter Love

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.

Topics: Travel, America, Gold, Watchers, Bards

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

source: - John Keats (2009). “Selected Letters of John Keats: Revised Edition”, p.263, Harvard University Press

Topics: Thinking, Class, Monsters, Barristers, Best Lawyer

There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.

Topics: Music, Life And Love, World

Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not

Topics: Beauty, Art, Imagination

An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people-it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of the mystery.

Topics: Knowledge, Thinking, People

Nothing ever becomes real till experienced – even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it

Topics: Life, Real, Experience

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

source: - "Ode on a Grecian Urn" l. 46 (1820)

Topics: Beauty, Truth, Needs, Knowing The Truth, Odes

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.

Topics: Art, Stars, Night, Steadfast, Splendour

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Nature, Beautiful Nature, Inspirational Earth

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

Topics: War, Failure, Greatness, Success Failure, Overcoming Failure

...I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become more acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.

Topics: Silly, Rocks, Sea, Endymion

We must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion, or with any other feeling than regret and hope and brotherly commiseration.

Topics: Religious, Regret, Men

The world is too brutal for me-I am glad there is such a thing as the grave-I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there.

Topics: World, Chaos, Graves

The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.

Topics: Art, Excellence, Intensity, Close Relationship

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 a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.

Topics: Life, Character, Ambition, Undecided

How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world improve a sense of its natural beauties upon us. Like poor Falstaff, although I do not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have know from my infancy - their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with superhuman fancy.

Topics: Death, Flower, Thinking, Falstaff, Green Fields

O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song!

Topics: Song, Simple, Romance, Minstrels, Old Romance

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that ofttimes hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Topics: Home, Heart, Sea, Forlorn, Sad Heart

The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.

Topics: Life, Men, Bears

Asleep in lap of legends old.

Topics: Lap, Legends

I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave - thank God for the quiet grave

Topics: Death, Thank God, Quiet

Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown, To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne.

Topics: Gratitude, Heaven, Thrones

A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.

Topics: Love, Poet, Metaphysical

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

Topics: Thinking, Mind

I always made an awkward bow.

Topics: Farewell, Awkward, Bows

Call the world if you please "the vale of soul-making." Then you will find out the use of the world.

Topics: Soul, Use, World

Give me women, wine and snuff Until I cry out 'hold, enough!' You may do so san objection Till the day of resurrection; For bless my beard then aye shall be My beloved Trinity.

Topics: Wine, Giving, Beard, Objections, Snuff

I don't need the stars in the night I found my treasure All I need is you by my side so shine forever

Topics: Love, Stars, Night, Forever Love

I equally dislike the favor of the public with the love of a woman - they are both a cloying treacle to the wings of independence.

Topics: Love, Wings, Independence, Treacle

I never can feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of its beauty.

Topics: Beauty, Perception, Certain

Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers.

Topics: Intellectual, Purpose, Ripening

Though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though the carpet were of silk, the curtains of the morning clouds; the chairs and sofa stuffed with cygnet's down; the food manna, the wine beyond claret, the window opening on Winander Mere, I should not feel -or rather my happiness would not be so fine, as my solitude is sublime.

Topics: Happiness, Beautiful, Morning, Beautiful Creatures, End Of Journey

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.

Topics: Happiness, Stars, Children, Window Panes

I love your hills and I love your dales, And I love your flocks a-bleating; but oh, on the heather to lie together, With both our hearts a-beating!

Topics: Love, Lying, Heart

It is a flaw In happiness to see beyond our bourn, - It forces us in summer skies to mourn, It spoils the singing of the nightingale.

Topics: Summer, Sky, Singing

O fret not after knowledge - I have none, and yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge - I have none, and yet the Evening listens.

Topics: Song, War, Evening

Faded the flower and all its budded charms,Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!Vanishd unseasonably

Topics: War, Flower, Eye, Faded

Is there another Life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be we cannot be created for this sort of suffering.

source: - John Keats (2002). “Selected Letters”, p.366, Oxford University Press, USA

Topics: Dream, Suffering, Another Life

This Grave contains all that was Mortal of a Young English Poet Who on his Death Bed in the Bitterness of his Heart at the Malicious Power of his Enemies Desired these words to be engraved on his Tomb Stone "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water."

Topics: Lying, Heart, Names, Engraved, Death Bed

I have loved the principle of beauty in all things.

Topics: Principles

The thought, the deadly thought of solitude.

Topics: Solitude

O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings

Topics: Solitude, Building, Thee, Steep, Foxgloves

Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!

Topics: Blessed, Self, Healthy, Self Destructive

Are there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?

Topics: Love, Agony, Humanity

O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth!

Topics: Sleep, Sea, Bird

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.

Topics: Love, Pain, Ambition, Alertness, Enticement

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.

Topics: Life, Men, Departed, Sounder

I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing 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...

Topics: Sexy, Sensual, Moments, Dissolving, Forgetful

I would jump down Etna for any public good - but I hate a mawkish popularity.

Topics: Hate, Popularity, I Hate

Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Topics: Summer, Children, Wine, Eldest, May Day

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

Topics: Failure, Hell

What is there in thee, Moon! That thou should'st move My heart so potently?

Topics: Moving, Heart, Moon

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.

Topics: Party, Two, Mind, Two Minds

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair.

Topics: Stars, Sadness, Silence, Saturn

The grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead.

Topics: Doom, Grandeur

The poppies hung Dew-dabbled on their stalks.

Topics: Dew, Poppies, Stalking

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new?

Topics: Passion, Heaven, Soul, Bards

No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

Topics: Summer, Nature, Light

Dry your eyes O dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies.

Topics: Eye, Ease, Dry

I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried- "La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!

Topics: Kings, Warrior, Dames, Kings And Princes, Belle

Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

Topics: Keys, Soul, Caskets

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.

Topics: Sweet, Flower, Feet, Incense

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill, The air was cooling, and so very still, That the sweet buds which with a modest pride Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, Had not yet lost those starry diadems Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.

Topics: Sweet, Pride, Curves, Tapering, Goldfinches

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

Topics: Identity, Body, Poet, Informing

Young playmates of the rose and daffodil, Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill Your baskets high With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines Savory latter-mint, and columbines.

Topics: Rose, Green, Golden, Savory, Mint

The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.

Topics: Music, Silver, Trumpets, Snarling

I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.

Topics: Thinking, Poet

I have nothing to speak of but my self-and what can I say but what I feel

Topics: Self, Speak, Feels

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers.

Topics: Flower, Hair, Wind

A moment's thought is passion's passing knell.

Topics: Passion, Moments, Passing

The genius of Shakespeare was an innate university.

Topics: Genius, University

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.

Topics: Song, Sweet, Poetry

I came to feel how far above All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood, All earthly pleasure, all imagined good, Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss.

Topics: Pride, Kissing, Fickle

Death is Life's high meed.

Topics: Death

How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not.

Topics: Self, Mad, Imagination

...all my clear-eyed fish, Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish, Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze... My charming rod, my potent river spells...

Topics: Lakes, Sea, Fishing

I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world.

Topics: Drinking, Ideas, World

You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.

Topics: Artist, Rift, Might, Curb, Magnanimity

He, who is gone, was one of the very kindest friends I possessed, and yet he was not kinder perhaps to me, than to others. His intense mind and powerful feelings would, I truly believe, have done the world some service, had his life been spared but he was of too sensitive a nature and thus he was destroyed!

Topics: Powerful, Believe, Feelings

I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of I am, however young, writing at random straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?

Topics: Writing, Animal, Thinking

Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From low hung branches; little space they stop; But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek; Then off at once, as in a wanton freak: Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings Pausing upon their yellow flutterings.

Topics: Wings, Yellow, Space, Goldfinches

But the rose leaves herself upon the brier, For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed.

Topics: Grateful, Kissing, Wind

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone. Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Topics: Song, Sweet, Kissing

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 hands' weaving.

Topics: Sweet, Grieving, Hands, Tied

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold.

Topics: Gold, Realms

Where soil is, men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers.

Topics: Weed, Flower, Men

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,-- Nature's observatory--whence the dell, In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.

Topics: Rivers, Solitude, Foxgloves

Soft closer of our eyes! Low murmur of tender lullabies!

Topics: Sleep, Eye, Lows, Lullaby

Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth.

Topics: Divine, Nightingales

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.

Topics: Night, Voice, Bird, Forlorn, Nightingales

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?

Topics: Dream, Sleep, Past, Meadows, Adieu

But were there ever any Writhed not at passed joy?

Topics: Joy

No, no, I'm sure, My restless spirit never could endure To brood so long upon one luxury, Unless it did, though fearfully, espy A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

Topics: Dream, Luxury, Long, Restless Spirit

Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?

Topics: Hearing

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed / That my own soul has to itself decreed.

Topics: Years, Soul, Deeds

In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time.

Topics: Summer, Sweet, Apollo, Fretting

I do think better of womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not.

Topics: Caring, Thinking, Feet

Why employ intelligent and highly paid ambassadors and then go and do their work for them? You don't buy a canary and sing yourself.

Topics: Intelligent, Ambassadors, Canaries

Even bees, the little almsmen of spring bowers, know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.

source: - John Keats (1818). “The Complete Works of John Keats”, p.41

Topics: Spring, Flower, Poison, Little Bee

Neither poetry, nor ambition, nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me.

Topics: Ambition, Alertness, Countenance

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.

Topics: Beautiful, Self, Sorrow

O, sorrow! Why dost borrow Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?

Topics: Heart, Sorrow, May, Merriment

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours.

Topics: Midnight, Hours, Choir

I am certain I have not a right feeling towards women -- at this moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When I was a schoolboy I thought a fair woman a pure Goddess; my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, though she knew it not.

Topics: Women, Fall, Imagination, Boyish

The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.

Topics: Children, Women, Giving

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.

Topics: Stars, Long, Imagination

I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave--thank God for the quiet grave--O! I can feel the cold earth upon me--the daisies growing over me--O for this quiet--it will be my first.

Topics: Death, Thank God, Growing

My spirit is too weak--mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

Topics: Death, Sleep, Eagles, Pinnacle

Touch has a memory. O say, love say, What can I do to kill it and be free In my old liberty?

Topics: Memories, Liberty

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; and gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Topics: Garden, Sky, Listening

He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

Topics: Thinking, Indolence, Awake

My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on my Tomb.

Topics: Friendship, Dozen, Drink, Claret

Every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.

Topics: Errors, Experience, Form

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

Topics: Song, Purple, Mouths, Winking

And shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

Topics: Moss, May, Shade

There is a budding tomorrow in midnight.

Topics: Midnight, Tomorrow

The poetry of earth is never dead When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide I cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.

Topics: Running, Voice, Bird, Grasshoppers, Mead

There is an old saying "well begun is half done"-'tis a bad one. I would use instead-Not begun at all 'til half done.

Topics: Use, Done, Half, Old Saying

Its better to lose your ego to the One you Love than to lose the One you Love to your Ego

Topics: Ego, One You Love, Loses

To stay youthful, stay useful.

Stop and consider! life is but a day

source: - 'Sleep and Poetry' (1817) l. 85

Topics: Life Is

I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter.

Topics: Despair, Energy, Latter

... the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown - the Air is our robe of state - the Earth is our throne, and the Sea a mighty minstrel playing before it.

source: - John Keats (1914*). “The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats”, p.266, Рипол Классик

Topics: Air, Sea, Sky, Robes, Minstrels

You are always new to me.

Topics: Relationship

To silence gossip, don't repeat it.

Topics: Gossip, Silence, Repeats

Some say the world is a vale of tears, I say it is a place of soul-making.

Topics: Soul, Tears, World

Failure is in a sense the highway to success, as each discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true.

Topics: Failure, Discovery, Highways

If I should die, 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.

source: - Letter to Fanny Brawne, ca. Feb. 1820

Topics: Memories, Principles, Proud

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.

Topics: Lakes, Water, Poetry, Bright Star

That which is creative must create itself.

source: - John Keats (2015). “Sonnets (Complete Edition): 63 Sonnets from one of the most beloved English Romantic poets, influenced by John Milton and Edmund Spenser, and one of the greatest lyric poets in English Literature, alongside William Shakespeare”, p.226, e-artnow

Topics: Creative, Awareness, Endymion

Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.

source: - John Keats (1914*). “The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats”, p.75, Рипол Классик

Topics: Valentines Day, Kissing, Romantic Love, Kissing Funny, Kissing Her

If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true.

Topics: Beautiful, Ifs

All writing is a form of prayer.

Topics: Prayer, Writing, Form

To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty

source: - John Keats (1914*). “The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats”, p.207, Рипол Классик

Topics: Naked, Bears, Calm, Composure

Knowledge enormous makes a god of me.

source: - 'Hyperion: A Fragment' (1820) bk. 3, l. 113

Topics: Enormous, Blithe, Elixir

Through the dancing poppies stole A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul.

source: - John Keats (1818). “Endymion: A Poetic Romance”, p.30

Topics: Dancing, Soul, Poppies

Health is the greatest of blessings - with health and hope we should be content to live.

source: - John Keats (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of John Keats (Illustrated)”, p.190, Delphi Classics

Topics: Blessing, Should

Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive.

source: - John Keats (1914*). “The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats”, p.43, Рипол Классик

Topics: Flower, Passive, Receptive

Time, that aged nurse, Rocked me to patience.

source: - John Keats, Richard Monckton Milnes Baron Houghton (1855). “The Poetical Works of John Keats”, p.82

Topics: Time, Nurse

The air is all softness.

source: - John Keats (1818). “The Complete Works of John Keats”, p.172

Topics: Air, Softness

Open afresh your rounds of starry folds, Ye ardent Marigolds.

source: - John Keats, Helen Vendler (1990). “Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard”, p.32, Harvard University Press

Topics: Flower, Marigolds, Ardent

I never knew before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was; I did not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up. But if you will fully love me, though there may be some fire, 'twill not be more than we can bear when moistened and bedewed with Pleasures.

source: - John Keats (2009). “Selected Letters of John Keats: Revised Edition”, p.312, Harvard University Press

Topics: Love, Romantic, Believe, Bright Star

Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest.

source: - John Keats (1914*). “The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats”, p.69, Рипол Классик

Topics: Giving, Joy, Unrest

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity.

source: - 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' (1820) st. 5

Topics: Silent, Eternity, Tease

I wish to believe in immortality-I wish to live with you forever.

source: - Letter to Fanny Brawne, June 1820, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 2, p. 293

Topics: Believe, Forever, Wish

Life is but a day; A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way From a tree's summit.

source: - "The poetical works of John Keats".

Topics: Tree, Way, Life Is

I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen.

source: - John Keats (1889). “Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne”, p.15, Рипол Классик

Topics: Stars, Tonight, Venus

I find I cannot exist without Poetry

source: - John Keats (2015). “The Complete Poetry of John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn + Ode to a Nightingale + Hyperion + Endymion + The Eve of St. Agnes + Isabella + Ode to Psyche + Lamia + Sonnets and more from one of the most beloved English Romantic poets”, p.103, e-artnow

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget.

source: - 'Ode to a Nightingale' (1820) st. 3

Topics: Forget, Far Away, Fades