John Keats Quotes

287 Sourced Quotes

O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song!

John Keats
To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven.

John Keats
For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gush'd blood; for them in death The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe A thousand men in troubles wide and dark: Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,
That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

John Keats
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by? —"On death

John Keats
I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill's side.

John Keats
For, by all the stars That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars That kept my spirit in are burst - that I Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!

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

John Keats
Conversation is not a search after knowledge, but an endeavor at effect.

John Keats
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape?
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

John Keats
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.

John Keats
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

John Keats
Every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer.

John Keats
Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight; With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings.

John Keats
Let us not go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there for a knowledge of what is not to be arrived at, but let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo, and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit - sap will be given us for meat and dew for drink.

John Keats
Through the dancing poppies stole A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul.

John Keats
'Tis the witching hour of night,
Orbed is the moon and bright.
And the stars they glisten, glisten,
Seeming with bright eyes to listen-
For what listen they?

John Keats
All my clear-eyed fish, Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish, Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze... My charming rod, my potent river spells...

John Keats
Feeling well that breathed words Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps Of grasshoppers against the sun...

John Keats
Or thou might'st better listen to the wind, Whose language is to thee a barren noise, Though it blows legend-laden through the trees.

John Keats
Young playmates of the rose and daffodil, Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill Your baskets high With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines Savory latter-mint, and columbines.

John Keats
In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time.

John Keats
Neither poetry, nor ambition, nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me.

John Keats
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently.

John Keats
Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams, Lover of loneliness, and wandering, Of upcast eye, and tender pondering! Thee must I praise above all other glories That smile us on to tell delightful stories.

John Keats
But the rose leaves herself upon the brier, For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed.

John Keats
An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people-it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of the mystery.

John Keats
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?

John Keats
Andromeda! Sweet woman! Why delaying So timidly among the stars: come hither! Join this bright throng, and nimbly follow whither They all are going.

John Keats
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
Dry your eyes O dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies.

John Keats