John Keats Quotes

Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers.

Works of genius are the first things in this world.

They will explain themselves — as all poems should do without any comment.

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.

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

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

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.

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast.

The sweet converse of an innocent mind.

Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind
Along the reedy stream; a half-heard strain,
Full of sweet desolation—balmy pain.

My chest of books divide amongst my friends.

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

To his sight
The husk of natural objects opens quite
To the core; and every secret essence there
Reveals the elements of good and fair;
Making him see, where Learning hath no light.

None can usurp this height...
But those to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery, and will not let them rest.

Bright star! would I were stedfast 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.