Quotes from John Keats

Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.

The music, yearning like a God in pain.

Life is but a day: A fragile dewdrop on its perilious way From a tree's summit

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

Deep in the shady sadness of a valeFar sunken from the healthy breath of morn,Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone.

A Man's life of any worth is a continual allegory—and very few eyes can see the Mystery of his life—a life like the scriptures, figurative…. Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not figurative—Shakespeare led a life of Allegory: his works are the comments on it.

Let the mad poets say whate'er they pleaseOf the sweets of Fairies, Peris, Goddesses,Haunters of cavern, lake, and waterfall,As a real woman, lineal indeedFrom Pyrrha's pebbles or old Adam's seed.

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,To let the warm Love in!

A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

Beyond a mortal man impassion'd farAt these voluptuous accents, he arose,Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing starSeen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose;Into her dream he melted, as the rose,Blendeth its odour with the violet,—Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blowsLike Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleetAgainst the window-panes; St. Agnes' moon hath set.

Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: We read fine—things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the Author.

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

My spirit is too weak—mortalityWeighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,And each imagin'd pinnacle and steepOf godlike hardship, tells me I must dieLike a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude!

O for ten years, that I may overwhelmMyself in poesy; so I may do the deedThat my own soul has to itself decreed.

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

It keeps eternal whisperings aroundDesolate shores, and with its mighty swellGluts twice ten thousand caverns.

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

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.

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

I can scarcely bid you good bye even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you!