John Keats Quotes

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

“It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.”

“I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.”

“To feel forever 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 in death.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“And when thou art weary I'll find thee a bed,
Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head.”

“Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: — Do I wake or sleep?”

“I will clamber through the clouds and exist.”

“When by my solitary hearth I sit,
When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.”

“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.”

“Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,
Lover of loneliness, and wandering,
Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!
Thee must I praise above all other glories
That smile us on to tell delightful stories.”

“Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams
The summer time away.”

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

“Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,
- Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead.
Awake! arise! my love and fearless be,
For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee.”

“Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!”

“The air is all softness.”

“Already with thee! tender is the night.”

“I have a habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am now leading a posthumous existence.”

“And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes.”

“I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.”

“I find I cannot exist without Poetry”

“Life is divine Chaos. It's messy, and it's supposed to be that way.”

“Scenery is fine — but human nature is finer.”

“Poetry should… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance".”

“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.”

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

“Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
---"On death”

“Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes.”

“When it is moving on luxurious wings,
The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings.”

“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —
To thy high requiem become a sod.”

“When shall we pass a day alone? I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love - but if you should deny me the thousand and first - 'twould put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.”

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

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

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

“As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.”

“But were there ever any
Writh'd not of passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.”

“Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest.”

“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?”

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

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

“Some think I have lost that poetical ardour and fire 'tis said I once had- the fact is, perhaps I have; but, instead of that, I hope I shall substitute a more thoughtful and quiet power.”

“For to bear all naked truths,
And to envisage circumstance, all calm,
That is the top of sovereignty.”

“Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain,
Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies.”

“Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,
They alway must be with us, or we die.”

“I scarcely remember counting upon happiness — I look not for it if it be not in the present hour — nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.”

“E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.”

“The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast.”