John Keats Quotes

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.

~ John Keats

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination.

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

Life is but a day,A fragile dew-drop on its perilous wayFrom a tree’s summit.

~ John Keats

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.

~ John Keats

Here lies one whose name was writ on water.

~ John Keats

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter

~ John Keats

For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

~ John Keats

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in the rubbish.

~ John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

~ John Keats

If I am destined to be happy with you here—how short is the longest Life—I wish to believe in immortality—I wish to live with you for ever.

~ John Keats

Wherein lies happiness? In that which becksOur ready minds to fellowship divine,A fellowship with essence; till we shine,Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. BeholdThe clear religion of heaven!

~ John Keats

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.

~ John Keats

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!

~ John Keats

Darkling I listen; and, for many a timeI have been half in love with easeful Death...

~ John Keats

Darkling I listen; and, for many a timeI 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.

~ John Keats

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

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

~ John Keats

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheardAre sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.

~ John Keats

To SorrowI 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

You are always new. THe last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass'd my window home yesterday, I was fill'd with as much admiration as if I had then seen you for the first time...Even if you did not love me I could not help an entire devotion to you.

~ John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

I do think the barsThat kept my spirit in are burst - that IAm sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!How beautiful thou art!

~ John Keats

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

Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes.

~ John Keats

Open wide the mind's cage-door,She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

~ 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

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

~ John Keats

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

~ 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

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

~ John Keats

O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, Would all their colours from the sunset take.

~ 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

I have good reason to be content,for thank God I can read andperhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.

~ 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

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

~ John Keats