John Keats Quotations | Page 3

The poppies hung Dew-dabbled on their stalks.

The grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead.

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone. Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

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?

A moment's thought is passion's passing knell.

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

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.

They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus.

Ay, on the shores of darkness there is a light, and precipices show untrodden green; there is a budding morrow in midnight; there is triple sight in blindness keen.

All clean and comfortable I sit down to write.

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

Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.

Many have original minds who do not think it - they are led away by custom!

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us - and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject. - How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, "admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose!"

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

How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they

We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth."

In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity.

Its better to lose your ego to the One you Love than to lose the One you Love to your Ego

O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song!

To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty

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.

The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man; it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself.

You are always new to me.

Everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.

To stay youthful, stay useful.

If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true.

A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

Works of genius are the first things in the world.

His religion at best is an anxious wish,-like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.

Some say the world is a vale of tears, I say it is a place of soul-making.

Many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death.

There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of immortality.

I should write for the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every morning and no eye shine upon them.

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill, The air was cooling, and so very still, That the sweet buds which with a modest pride Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, Had not yet lost those starry diadems Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.

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

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!

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.

The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.

Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience.

I am certain I have not a right feeling towards women -- at this moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When I was a schoolboy I thought a fair woman a pure Goddess; my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, though she knew it not.

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours.

The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.

Where soil is, men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers.

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold.

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 hands' weaving.

I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.

Young playmates of the rose and daffodil, Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill Your baskets high With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines Savory latter-mint, and columbines.

No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

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

What occasions the greater part of the world's quarrels? Simply this: Two minds meet and do not understand each other in time enough to prevent any shock of surprise at the conduct of either party.

Stop and consider! life is but a day

The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream-he awoke and found it truth.

Dry your eyes O dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies.

Health is the greatest of blessings - with health and hope we should be content to live.

... 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...

A quote about drinking is a joy forever

A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory.

... Who alive can say 'Thou art no Poet - mayst not tell thy dreams'? Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved, And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.

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

Call the world if you please "the vale of soul-making." Then you will find out the use of the world.

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.

He, who is gone, was one of the very kindest friends I possessed, and yet he was not kinder perhaps to me, than to others. His intense mind and powerful feelings would, I truly believe, have done the world some service, had his life been spared but he was of too sensitive a nature and thus he was destroyed!

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

I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world.

...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...

How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not.

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.

All writing is a form of prayer.

I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave--thank God for the quiet grave--O! I can feel the cold earth upon me--the daisies growing over me--O for this quiet--it will be my first.

My spirit is too weak--mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave - thank God for the quiet grave

Asleep in lap of legends old.

Soft closer of our eyes! Low murmur of tender lullabies!

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.

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

In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?

But were there ever any Writhed not at passed joy?

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.

No, no, I'm sure, My restless spirit never could endure To brood so long upon one luxury, Unless it did, though fearfully, espy A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

O, sorrow! Why dost borrow Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.

Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?

Every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.

Dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth! On for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth.

And shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

There is a budding tomorrow in midnight.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With 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 shells With 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.

That which is creative must create itself.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it.

Dancing music, music sad, Both together, sane and mad…

Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success...

To one who has been long in city pent, ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence.

Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not