John Keats Quotes
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A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity - he is continually informing - and filling some other body.
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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.
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Who are these coming to the sacrifice?To what green altar, O mysterious priest,Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
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I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you!
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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 wouldst wish thine own heart dry of bloodSo in my veins red life might stream again,And thou be conscience-calm'd - see here it is -I hold it towards you.
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'If I should die,' said I to myself, 'I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.'
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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!
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A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see the mystery of life - a life like the Scriptures, figurative... Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not figurative. Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it.
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Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
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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.
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I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.
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And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
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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.
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As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.
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In spite of all,Some shape of beauty moves away the pallFrom our dark spirits.
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The Public - a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.
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I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
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Shed no tear! O shed no tear!The flower will bloom another year.Weep no more! O weep no more!Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
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Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.
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And there shall be for thee all soft delightThat shadowy thought can win,A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,To let the warm Love in!
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You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.
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Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forgetWhat thou among the leaves hast never known,The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, where men sit and hear each other groan;Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;Where but to think is to be full of sorrowAnd leaden-eyed despairs.
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But were there ever anyWrith'd not of passed joy?The feel of not to feel it,When there is none to heal it,Nor numbed sense to steel it,Was never said in rhyme.
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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.