Authors:

John Keats Quotes - Page 11

All Quotes Ambition Art Autumn Beauty Children Darkness Death Depression Dying Excellence Experience Failure Feelings Genius Giving Gold Grieving Happiness Hate Heart Heaven Home Hope Imagination Immortality Inspirational Joy Kissing Knowledge Life Literature Love Lying Moon Morning Music Nature Pain Passion Philosophy Pleasure Poetry Pride Religion Romance Romantic Love Sadness Science Silence Silver Sleep Solitude Sorrow Soul Spring Summer Time Truth Vision War Water Wine Winter Writing
I am certain I have not a right feeling towards women -- at this moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When I was a schoolboy I thought a

I am certain I have not a right feeling towards women -- at this moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When I was a schoolboy I thought a fair woman a pure Goddess; my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, though she knew it not.

John Keats
Women, Fall, Imagination
John Keats (2002). “Selected Letters”, p.128, Oxford University Press, USA

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

John Keats
Knights, Arms, Thee
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" l. 1 (1820)

The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.

John Keats
Children, Women, Giving
John Keats (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of John Keats (Illustrated)”, p.752, Delphi Classics

For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.

John Keats
Philosophy, Experience, Pulse
Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 3 May 1818, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 279

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
Wise, Wisdom, Pride
John Keats (2015). “John Keats - The Man Behind The Lyrics: Life, letters, and literary remains: Complete Letters and Two Extensive Biographies of one of the most beloved English Romantic poets”, p.803, e-artnow

We must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion, or with any other feeling than regret and hope and brotherly commiseration.

John Keats
Hope, Religious, Regret

When it is moving on luxurious wings, The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings.

John Keats
Moving, Wings, Soul
John Keats, Helen Vendler (1990). “Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard”, p.36, Harvard University Press

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.

John Keats
Beautiful, Self, Sorrow
John Keats (1871). “Poetical Works”, p.284

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone. Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

John Keats
Song, Sweet, Kissing
'Ode on a Grecian Urn' (1820) st. 2

The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man; it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable sdvice.

John Keats
Silly, Men, Sea
Letter to James Hessey, October 9, 1818.

Give me women, wine and snuff Until I cry out 'hold, enough!' You may do so san objection Till the day of resurrection; For bless my beard then aye shall be My beloved Trinity.

John Keats
Wine, Giving, May
John Keats, “Give Me Women, Wine, And Snuff”

Music's golden tongue Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.

John Keats
Music, Men, Tears
John Keats (2010). “Bright Star: The Complete Poems and Selected Letters”, p.224, Random House

Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

John Keats
Summer, Children, Wine
'Ode to a Nightingale' (1820) st. 5

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a muse' d 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!

John Keats
Art, Time, Pain
Ode to Nightingale St. 6 (1820)

How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not.

John Keats
Self, Mad, Imagination
John Keats (2002). “Selected Letters of John Keats”

This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That 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.

John Keats
Dream, Heart, Night
'This living hand, now warm and capable' (written 1819)

The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.

John Keats
Life, Men, Bears

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.

John Keats
Depression, Philosophy, Angel
'Lamia' (1820) pt. 2, l. 229

Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

John Keats
Keys, Soul, Caskets
1819 'To Sleep'.

He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

John Keats
Thinking, Indolence, Awake
John Keats (2015). “John Keats - The Man Behind The Lyrics: Life, letters, and literary remains: Complete Letters and Two Extensive Biographies of one of the most beloved English Romantic poets”, p.440, e-artnow

No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures Than I began to think of rhymes and measures: The air that floated by me seem'd to say 'Write! thou wilt never have a better day.

John Keats
Writing, Thinking, Air
John Keats (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of John Keats (Illustrated)”, p.44, Delphi Classics

We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth."

John Keats
Truth, Tests, Aphorism

She hurried at his words, beset with fears, For there were sleeping dragons all around.

John Keats
Sleep, Dragons
John Keats (1994). “The Works of John Keats: With an Introduction and Bibliography”, p.217, Wordsworth Editions

To feel forever 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 in death.

John Keats
Sweet, Fall, Taken
John Keats (1859). “The Poetical Works of John Keats: With a Life”, p.438

Let us away, my love, with happy speed; There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see, - Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead. Awake! arise! my love and fearless be, For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee.

John Keats
Home, Eye, Southern
John Keats (2015). “The Complete Poetry of John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn + Ode to a Nightingale + Hyperion + Endymion + The Eve of St. Agnes + Isabella + Ode to Psyche + Lamia + Sonnets and more from one of the most beloved English Romantic poets”, p.660, e-artnow

You May Also Like: