John Keats Quotes - Page 5

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

one of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

A drainless shower Of light is poesy: 'tis the supreme of power; 'Tis might half slumbering on its own right arm.

• John Keats / Poet

Severn - I - lift me up - I am dying - I shall die easy; don't be frightened - be firm, and thank God it has come.

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

No one can usurp the heights... But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest.

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries, She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf, Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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 / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud, Sweet Hope! celestial influence round me shed Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head.

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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!

• John Keats / Poet

Or thou might'st better listen to the wind, Whose language is to thee a barren noise, Though it blows legend-laden through the trees.

• John Keats / Poet

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 / Poet

Who would wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous - who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

To the very last, he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carrière ouverte aux talents, - the tools to him that can handle them.

• John Keats / Poet

Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel.

• John Keats / Poet

I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.

• John Keats / Poet

And there shall be for thee all soft delight That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!

• John Keats / Poet

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!

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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 / Poet

Feeling well that breathed words Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps Of grasshoppers against the sun.

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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.

• John Keats / Poet

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 / Poet

I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise.

• John Keats / Poet

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.