John Keats: Quotes about beauty

John Keats was English Romantic poet. Explore interesting quotes on beauty.
John Keats: 422 quotes39 likes

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

John Keats

Source: Endymion: A Poetic Romance

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not.”

John Keats

Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”

John Keats

Source: The Complete Poems

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
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.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 1
Endymion (1818)

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 1
Endymion (1818)
Context: A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
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.

“I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.”

John Keats

To Fanny Brawne (c. February 1820)
Letters (1817–1820)
Context: "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."

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”

John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn

Source: Ode on a Grecian Urn and Other Poems

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

John Keats

Letter to G. and F. Keats (December 21, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)

“I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!
How beautiful thou art!”

John Keats

Source: Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

“I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.”

John Keats

Letter to James Hessey (October 9, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

“She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips.
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.”

John Keats Ode on Melancholy

"Ode on Melancholy", st. 3
Poems (1820)

“In spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 11
Endymion (1818)

“I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful — a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.”

John Keats book La Belle Dame sans Merci

Stanza IV
La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819)

“Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn

Stanza 5. The final lines of this poem have been rendered in various ways in different editions, some placing the entire last two lines within quotation marks, others only the statement "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," and others without any quotation marks. The poet's final intentions upon the matter before his death are unclear.
Poems (1820), Ode on a Grecian Urn

“In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.”

John Keats

Letter to John Taylor (February 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)