Quotes by John Keats

"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."

"My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk."

"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."

"What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth."

"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."

"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."

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

"There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object."

"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance."

"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance."

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

"The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate."

"Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel."

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."

"Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced."

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard  Are sweeter."

"Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave A paradise for a sect."

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

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness."

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

"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."

"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."

"Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer."

"Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever."

"Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss."

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

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

"Philosophy will clip an angel's wings."

"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."

"The poetry of the earth is never dead."

"Love is my religion - I could die for it."

"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."

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

"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 thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness."

"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."

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

"Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home."

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases it will never pass into nothingness."

"I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."