John Keats

“O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!”

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

“it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

“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:  Perhaps the self-same song that found a path     Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,      She stood in tears amid the alien corn;            The same that ofttimes hath    Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam      Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”

“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.”

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

“My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it.”

“Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.”

“Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. 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 afterwards carefully avoid.”

“Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!”

“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of 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.Bright Star”

“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget...”

“I never was in love - yet the voice and the shape of a woman has haunted me these two days.”

“Brown and Dilke walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.”

“It ought to come like the leaves to the trees, or it better not come at all.”

“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.”

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

“The excellence of every Art is its intensity.”

“Then felt I like like some watcher of the skiesWhen a new planet swims into his ken;Like stout Cortes when with eagle eyesHe star'd at the Pacific-and all his menLook'd at each other with a wild surmiseSilent upon a peak in Darien”

“This living hand, now warm and capableOf earnest grasping, would, if it were coldAnd in the icy silence of the tomb,So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nightsThat thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood,So in my veins red life might stream again,And thou be conscience-calm'd. See, here it is--I hold it towards you.”

“Time, that aged nurse, rocked me to patience.”

“Here lies one whose name was writ on water.”

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

“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!”

“Real are the dreams of gods, and soothly pass their pleasures in a long immortal dream. ”

“O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,— Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee, Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.To Solitude”

“My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk”

“It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores”

“I want a brighter word than bright”

“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.”

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

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”

“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.”

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

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

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

“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.”

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

“Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,Alone and palely loitering?”

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

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

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

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

“Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.”

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

“Touch has a memory.”