John Keats Quotes

287 Sourced Quotes

I had a dove and the sweet dove died;
And I have thought it died of grieving:
O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied,
With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving.

John Keats
Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest Man shows a grace in his quarrel.

John Keats
There is nothing stable in the world—uproar's your only music.

John Keats
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honeyed middle of the night.

John Keats
In disease Medical Men guess: if they cannot ascertain a disease, they call it nervous.

John Keats
To make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours.

John Keats
I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

John Keats
A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.

John Keats
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours

John Keats
My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

John Keats
My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it.

John Keats
Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my mouth.

John Keats
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

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 wouldst 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
The automobile changed our dress, manners, social customs, vacation habits, the shape of our cities, consumer purchasing patterns, common tastes, and positions in intercourse.

John Keats
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.

John Keats
Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain,
Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies.

John Keats
Call the world if you Please "The vale of Soulmaking."

John Keats
In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

John Keats
St Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold.

John Keats
Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust;
Love in a palace is perhaps at last
More grievous torment than a hermit's fast.

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

John Keats
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

John Keats
O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings

John Keats
To Hope "When by my solitary hearth I sit, And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom; 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.

John Keats
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen.

John Keats
Old Meg she was a Gipsy,
And liv'd upon the Moors:
Her bed it was the brown heath turf,
And her house was out of doors.
Her apples were swart blackberries,
Her currants pods o' broom;
Her wine was dew of the wild white rose,
Her book a churchyard tomb.

John Keats
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

John Keats
Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.

John Keats
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!

John Keats