John Keats Quotes

Life is divine Chaos. It's messy, and it's supposed to be that way.

Love is my religion — I could die for it.

What is there in thee, Moon! That thou should'st move my heart so potently?

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.

A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing.

If I am destined to be happy with you here — how short is the longest Life.

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 and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze with itself, but with its subject.

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth.
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O 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.

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?

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not.

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

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

When by my solitary hearth I sit,
When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.

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