John Keats > Quotes

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter”
― John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn and Other Poems

“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”
― John Keats, Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

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

“I have been astonished that men could die martyrs
for their religion--
I have shuddered at it,
I shudder no more.
I could be martyred for my religion.
Love is my religion
and I could die for that.
I could die for you.
My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet.”
― John Keats

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

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
― John Keats, Endymion: A Poetic Romance

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

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

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.”
― John Keats

“Touch has a memory.”
― John Keats

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”
― John Keats

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”
― John Keats

“Life is but a day:
A fragile dewdrop on its perilious way
From a tree's summit”
― John Keats

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

- Ode to a Grecian Urn”
― John Keats, The Complete Poems

“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.”
― John Keats

“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.”
― John Keats

“I want a brighter word than bright”
― John Keats

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

“I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I were dissolving... I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion - I have shudder'd at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr'd for my Religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you. My creed is Love and you are its only tenet - You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist.”
― John Keats

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

“I have good reason to be content,
for thank God I can read and
perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.”
― John Keats

“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, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--- No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillowed 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 in death. ”
― John Keats

“I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.”
― John Keats

“The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind
about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”
― John Keats

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

“We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.”
― John Keats

“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.”
― John Keats

“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!”
― John Keats

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

“The excellence of every Art is its intensity.”
― John Keats, Complete Poems and Selected Letters