John Keats
86 quotes
Biography
"I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else."
"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."
"Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know."
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."
"I have been astonished that men could die martyrsfor their religion--I have shuddered at it,I shudder no more.I could be martyred for my religion.Love is my religionand I could die for that.I could die for you.My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet."
"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination."
"The poetry of the earth is never dead."
"Life is but a day:A fragile dewdrop on its perilious wayFrom a tree's summit"
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"
"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."
"Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not"
"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die,To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!"
"Here lies one whose name was writ on water."
"If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all."
"You are always new. THe last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass'd my window home yesterday, I was fill'd with as much admiration as if I had then seen you for the first time...Even if you did not love me I could not help an entire devotion to you."
"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."
"For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses."
"Love is my religion - I could die for it."
"The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate."
"Yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits."
"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
"My chest of books divide amongst my friends."
"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not."
"The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream — he awoke and found it truth."
"I scarcely remember counting upon happiness — I look not for it if it be not in the present hour — nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel."