John Keats

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.

— 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

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: 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

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

— John Keats

O fret not after knowledge -- I have none, and yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge -- I have none, and yet the Evening listens.

— John Keats

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

— John Keats

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

When I have fears that I may cease to be, Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain.

— John Keats

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

— John Keats

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

— John Keats

There's a blush for won t, and a blush for shan't, and a blush for having done it: There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught, and a blush for just begun it.

— John Keats

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.

— John Keats

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.

— John Keats

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

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

— John Keats

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

— John Keats

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

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.

— John Keats

I always made an awkward bow.

— John Keats

Health is my expected heaven.

— 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

It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.

— John Keats

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.

— John Keats

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

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

— John Keats

My passions are all asleep from my having slumbered till nearly eleven and weakened the animal fiber all over me to a delightful sensation about three degrees on this sight of faintness -- if I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor -- but as I am I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibers of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable frown. Neither poetry, nor ambition, nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me.

— 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

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

— John Keats

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. Not a select party.

— John Keats

Are there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?

— John Keats

Do not all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: we know her woof, her texture; she is given in the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, conquer all mysteries by rule and line, empty the haunted air, and gnome mine unweave a rainbow.

— John Keats

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water-lilied pond to eat white currants and see goldfish: and go to the fair in the evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that --one is sure to get into some mess before evening.

— 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

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.

— John Keats

I would jump down Etna for any public good -- but I hate a mawkish popularity.

— John Keats

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

A proverb is not a proverb to you until life has illustrated it.

— John Keats

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

— John Keats

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

Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds along the pebbled shore of memory!

— John Keats

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

— John Keats

Though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though the carpet were of silk, the curtains of the morning clouds; the chairs and sofa stuffed with cygnet's down; the food manna, the wine beyond claret, the window opening on Winander Mere, I should not feel --or rather my happiness would not be so fine, as my solitude is sublime.

— John Keats

O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings

— John Keats

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.

— John Keats

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be the truth.

— John Keats

Faded the flower and all its budded charms,Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!Vanishd unseasonably

— John Keats

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, for ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

— John Keats

In drear nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity--The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them, Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime.

— John Keats

What is more gentle than a wind in summer? What is more soothing than the pretty hummer That stays one moment in an open flower, And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?

— John Keats

He hath his autumn ports And havens of repose, when his tired wings Are folded up, and he content to look On mists in idleness: to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

— John Keats

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.

— John Keats

Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port, Away with old hock and madeira! Too earthly ye are for my sport; There's a beverage brighter and clearer!

— John Keats

Give me women, wine, and snuff Until I cry out "hold, enough!" You may do so sans objection Till the day of resurrection.

— John Keats