201 Inspiring Quotes by John Keats

All clean and comfortable I sit down to write.

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.

I would jump down Etna for any public good -- but I hate a mawkish popularity.

My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on my Tomb.

Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, Flushing his brow.

That which is creative must create itself.

Wine is only sweet to happy men.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

If poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, then it better not come at all.

I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along -- to what?

Like a mermaid in sea-weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest.

The poetry of earth is never dead When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide I cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.

Two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.

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.

I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!

I don't need the stars in the night I found my treasure All I need is you by my side so shine forever.

Where soil is, men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers.

I do think better of womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not.

Severn -- I -- lift me up -- I am dying -- I shall die easy; don't be frightened -- be firm, and thank God it has come.

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.

The excellence of every Art is its intensity.

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children.

I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource.

I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.

Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?

So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries, She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf, Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.

Open afresh your rounds of starry folds, Ye ardent Marigolds.

You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving.

I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of the Imagination.

As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden,- "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;" or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.

I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried- "La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!

Oh, sweet Fancy! Let her loose;
Everything is spoilt by use
Let the winged Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.

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

A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

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

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance.

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

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.

I should write for the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every morning and no eye shine upon them.

No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget.

Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.

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

There is a budding morrow in midnight.

A drainless shower of light is poesy: 'tis the supreme of power; Tis might half slumbering on its own right arm.

Are there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?

The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.

It is a flaw In happiness to see beyond our bourn -- It forces us in summer skies to mourn, It spoils the singing of the nightingale.

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

To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty.

It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.

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.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art -- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.

Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success.

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

My dear girl, I love you ever and ever and without reserve.

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

But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings That fill the sky with silver glitterings!

Who alive can say 'Thou art no Poet -- mayst not tell thy dreams'? Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved, And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.

I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen.

Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu.

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.

Ay, on the shores of darkness there is a light, and precipices show untrodden green; there is a budding morrow in midnight; there is triple sight in blindness keen.

Shed no tear -- O, shed no tear!

The flower will bloom another year.

Weep no more -- O, weep no more!

Young buds sleep in the root's white core.

The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest.

I equally dislike the favor of the public with the love of a woman -- they are both a cloying treacle to the wings of independence.

The Public -- a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green.

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

Even bees, the little alsmen of spring bowers, know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.

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.

No, no, I'm sure, 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.

Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth.

Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams The summer time away.

In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity.

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.

Why employ intelligent and highly paid ambassadors and then go and do their work for them? You don't buy a canary and sing yourself.

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

Already with thee! tender is the night... But here there is no light.

They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus.

Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience.

You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you: how I would die for one hour.

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

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity.

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

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold.

To Sorrow I bade good-morrow, And thought to leave her far away behind; But cheerly, cheerly, She loves me dearly: She is so constant to me, and so kind.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.

You are always new, The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.

How long is this posthumous life of mine to last?

How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they.

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.

Every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.

I never was in love -- yet the voice and the shape of a woman has haunted me these two days.

And shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

Asleep in lap of legends old.

My spirit is too weak -- mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

Dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth! On for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth.

What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon poet.

To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven, -- to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores.

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.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion -- I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more -- I could be martyred for my religion -- Love is my religion -- I could die for that.

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

I never felt my Mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment -- upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses.

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong,
And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.

A quote about drinking is a joy forever.

I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.

I have so much of you in my heart.

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

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.

Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.

My creed is love and you are its only tenet.

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

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!

One of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another.

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.

You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.

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

Scenery is fine -- but human nature is finer.

Dancing music, music sad, Both together, sane and mad.

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.

O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth!

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.

Failure is in a sense the highway to success, as each discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true.

I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever dew; And on thy cheek a fading rose Fast withereth too.

Lo! I must tell a tale of chivalry , for large white plumes are dancing in mine eye.

Faded the flower and all its budded charms,Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!Vanishd unseasonably.

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence.

Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold
The clear religion of heaven!

I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.

The poppies hung Dew-dabbled on their stalks.

That queen of secrecy, the violet.

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.

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.

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that ofttimes hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter.

I burn'd
And ached for wings.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new?

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is -- Love, forgive us! -- cinders, ashes, dust.

To Sorrow
I bade good morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind.

I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.

I Cannot Exist Without You. I Am Forgetful Of Everything But Seeing You Again.

I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my mouth.

Alas! thou this wilt never do:
Thou art an enchantress too,
And wilt surely never spill
Blood of those whose eyes can kill.

I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave -- thank God for the quiet grave -- O! I can feel the cold earth upon me -- the daisies growing over me -- O for this quiet -- it will be my first.

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.

Souls of poets dead and gone,

What Elysium have ye known,

Happy field or mossy cavern,

Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Have ye tippled drink more fine

Than mine host's Canary wine?

What when a stoud unbending champion awes envy and malice to their native sty?

Impossible is for the unwilling.

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

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

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

Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.

Its better to lose your ego to the One you Love than to lose the One you Love to your Ego.

He ne'er is crowned with immortality Who fears to follow where airy voices lead.

Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest.

You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.

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

Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive.

I wish to believe in immortality-I wish to live with you forever.

Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?