The Best John Keats quotes

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. — John Keats

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! — John Keats

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

Wine is only sweet to happy men. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

And how they kist each other’s tremulous eyes. — John Keats

The creature has a purpose, and his eyes are bright with it. — John Keats

Dry your eyes O dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies. — John Keats

Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes. — John Keats

Tis the witching hour of night, Orbed is the moon and bright. And the stars they glisten, glisten, Seeming with bright eyes to listen–For what listen they? — John Keats

Soft closer of our eyes! Low murmur of tender lullabies! — John Keats

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. — John Keats

His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed. — John Keats

Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams, Lover of loneliness, and wandering, Of upcast eye, and tender pondering! Thee must I praise above all other glories That smile us on to tell delightful stories. — John Keats

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 — John Keats

I have so much of you in my heart. — John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. — John Keats

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. — John Keats

I have loved the principle of beauty in all things. — John Keats

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be the truth. — John Keats

I never can feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of its beauty. — John Keats

With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. — John Keats

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness. — John Keats

Yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From out dark spirits. — John Keats

Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass Their pleasures in a long immortal dream. — John Keats

A hope beyond the shadow of a dream. — John Keats

Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect. — John Keats

The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream–he awoke and found it truth. — John Keats

Like a mermaid in sea–weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest. — John Keats

Was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music––do I wake or sleep? — John Keats

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. — John Keats

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

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. — John Keats

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination. — John Keats

The grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead. — John Keats

Thou art a dreaming thing, A fever of thyself. — John Keats

O latest born and loveliest vision far of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy. — John Keats

A man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory. — John Keats

Life is divine Chaos. It’s messy, and it’s supposed to be that way. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?–––’On death — John Keats

Life is but a day; A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way From a tree’s summit. — John Keats

O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! — John Keats

Stop and consider! life is but a day — John Keats

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. — John Keats

I have a habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am now leading a posthumous existence. — John Keats

Is there another Life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be we cannot be created for this sort of suffering. — John Keats

The uttered part of a man’s life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter. — John Keats

Many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death. — John Keats

Time, that aged nurse, Rocked me to patience. — John Keats

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time / I have been half in love with easeful Death… — John Keats

O aching time! O moments big as years! — John Keats

Thou foster–child of Silence and slow Time. — John Keats

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

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. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

What occasions the greater part of the world’s quarrels? Simply this: Two minds meet and do not understand each other in time enough to prevent any shock of surprise at the conduct of either party. — John Keats

It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man’s life with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of Time. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

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

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

No one can usurp the heights… But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest. — John Keats

The world is too brutal for me–I am glad there is such a thing as the grave–I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there. — John Keats

I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world. — John Keats

We have woven a web, you and I, attached to this world but a separate world of our own invention. — John Keats

The problems of The world cannot possible be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by The obvious realities. we need men who can dream of things that never were. — John Keats

Works of genius are the first things in the world. — John Keats

I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing, the top thing in the world. — John Keats

Scenery is fine–but human nature is finer. — John Keats

The poetry of the earth is never dead. — John Keats

A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility. — John Keats

My creed is love and you are its only tenet. — John Keats

My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you. — John Keats

I love you the more that I belIeve you have lIked me for my own sake and for nothIng else. — John Keats

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

Love is my religion–I could die for it. — John Keats

I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion and I could die for that. I could die for you. — John Keats

Then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. — John Keats

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

Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

I love your hills and I love your dales, And I love your flocks a–bleating; but oh, on the heather to lie together, With both our hearts a–beating! — John Keats

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

Touch has a memory. O say, love say, What can I do to kill it and be free In my old liberty? — John Keats

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? — John Keats

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

Alas! when passion is both meek and wild! — John Keats

The thought, the deadly thought of solitude. — John Keats

He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep. — John Keats

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

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity… — John Keats

There’s a blush for won’t, and a blush for shan’t, and a blush for having done it: There’s a blush for thought and a blush for naught, and a blush for just begun it. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

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. — 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

Sudden a thought came like a full–blown rose, Flushing his brow. — John Keats

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

A moment’s thought is passion’s passing knell. — John Keats

So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud, Sweet Hope! celestial influence round me shed Waving thy silver pinions o’er my head. — John Keats