John Keats Quotes

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moors--No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,To feel for ever 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 to death. Glanzvoller Stern! wär ich so stet wie du,Nicht hing ich nachts in einsam stolzer Pracht!SchautŽ nicht mit ewigem Blick beiseite zu,Einsiedler der Natur, auf hoher WachtBeim Priesterwerk der Reinigung, das die See,Die wogende, vollbringt am Meeresstrand;Noch starrt ich auf die Maske, die der SchneeSanft fallend frisch um Berg und Moore band.Nein, doch unwandelbar und unentwegtMöchtŽ ruhn ich an der Liebsten weicher Brust,Zu fühlen, wie es wogend dort sich regt,Zu wachen ewig in unruhiger Lust,Zu lauschen auf des Atems sanftes Wehen -So ewig leben - sonst im Tod vergehen!

~ John Keats

Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.

~ John Keats

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

~ John Keats

My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk

~ John Keats

Besides, 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

I have clung To nothing, lov’d a nothing, nothing seen Or felt but a great dream!

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

Touch has a memory.

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breedsAlong the pebbled shore of memory!Many old rotten-timber'd boats there beUpon thy vaporous bosom, magnifiedTo goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry.

~ John Keats

Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile madeThe tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade

~ John Keats

I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

~ John Keats

That men, who might have tower'd in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been content to let occasion die,Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium.

~ John Keats

And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun/ And she forgot the blue above the trees,/ And she forgot the dells where waters run,/ And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;/ She had no knowledge when the day was done,/ And the new morn she saw not: but in peace/ Hung over her sweet basil evermore,/ And moisten'd it with tears unto the core.

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource.

~ John Keats

Think of my Pleasure in Solitude, in comparison of my commerce with the world - there I am a child - there they do not know me not even my most intimate acquaintance - I give into their feelings as though I were refraining from irritating a little child - Some think me middling, others silly, other foolish - every one thinks he sees my weak side against my will; when in thruth it is with my will - I am content to be thought all this because I have in my own breast so graet a resource. This is one great reason why they like me so; because they can all show to advantage in a room, and eclipese from a certain tact one who is reckoned to be a good Poet - I hope I am not here playing tricks 'to make the angels weep': I think not: for I have not the least contempt for my species; and though it may sound paradoxical: my greatest elevations of Soul leave me every time more humbled - Enough of this - though in your Love for me you will not think it enough.

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy waysI cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

~ John Keats

Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die.

~ John Keats

Call the world, if you please, the Vale of Soul Making. Then you will find out the use of the world....There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions -- but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.Intelligences are atoms of perception -- they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God. How then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them -- so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence. How, but in the medium of a world like this?This point I sincerely wish to consider, because I think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion -- or rather it is a system of Spirit Creation...I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive -- and yet I think I perceive it -- that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible. I will call the world a school instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read. I will call the human heart the hornbook used in that school. And I will call the child able to read, the soul made from that school and its hornbook.Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways....As various as the lives of men are -- so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, souls, identical souls of the sparks of his own essence.This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of salvation which does not affront our reason and humanity...

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

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 afterward carefully avoid.

~ John Keats

There is a budding morrow in midnight.

~ John Keats

A drainless shower of light is poesy 'tis the supreme of power 'tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.

~ John Keats

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 very fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.

~ John Keats

Love is my religion - I could die for it.

~ John Keats

Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.

~ 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 new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.

~ John Keats

Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.

~ John Keats

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

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

~ John Keats

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more - I could be martyred for my religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that.

~ John Keats

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats

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

~ John Keats