Quotes from John Keats

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

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 deathThe seal on the cold ice with piteous barkLay full of darts; for them alone did seetheA 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.

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thicksighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.

Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,Creations and destroyings, all at oncePour into the wide hollows of my brain,And deify me, as if some blithe wineOr bright elixir peerless I had drunk,And so become immortal.

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

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

A drainless showerOf light is poesy; 'tis the supreme of power;'Tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.

To make delicious moanUpon the midnight hours.

I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twistWolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine.

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

And can I ever bid these joys farewell?Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,Where I may find the agonies, the strifeOf human hearts.

A Poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no Identity—he is continually infor[ming]—and filling some other Body.

I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.

Love is my religion — I could die for it.

When I have fears that I may cease to beBefore my pen has glean'd my teeming brain.

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.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath beenCool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,Tasting of Flora and the country green,Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!O, 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.

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.

This living hand, now warm and capableOf earnest grasping, would, if it were coldAnd in the icy silence of the tomb,So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nightsThat thou would wish thine own heart dry of bloodSo in my veins red life might stream again,And thou be conscience-calm'd—see here it is—I hold it towards you.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—Not in lone splendor hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth's human shores.

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.

And other spirits there are standing apartUpon the forehead of the age to come;These, these will give the world another heart,And other pulses. Hear ye not the humOf mighty workings——?Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.

I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise.