Top 100 Keats's Quotes
#1. When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats's idea of Negative Capability and Kipling's advice to "drift, wait, and obey." Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.
Rose Tremain
#2. A poem with grandly conceived and executed stanzas, such as one of Keats's odes, should be like an enfilade of rooms in a palace: one proceeds, with eager anticipation, from room to room.
James Fenton
#3. Eight years ago, I was drawn into Keats's world by Andrew Motion's biography. Soon I was reading back and forth between Keats's letters and his poems. The letters were fresh, intimate and irreverent, as though he were present and speaking. The Keats spell went very deep for me.
Jane Campion
#4. If you read Keats's poems, they're often full of doubts and anxieties. They can be quite tough.
Jane Campion
#5. We learned in the university to consider Wordsworth and Keats as Romantics. They were only a generation apart, but Wordsworth didn't even read Keats's book when he gave him a copy.
Thom Gunn
#6. 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
#7. No, for God's sake, I'm not bloody suicidal. And I'm not proposing, either. Forget I said anything.
Michael Grant
#8. 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
#9. And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes.
John Keats
#10. 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.
John Keats
#11. He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.
John Keats
#12. I believe in nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. - JOHN KEATS
Jandy Nelson
#13. When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance ...
John Keats
#14. 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
#16. 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
#17. Fantasies don't have to make any sense," he snapped. "That's what makes them fantasies. They aren't meant to be logical, they're meant to keep you from losing your mind or panicking or wanting to kill yourself.
Michael Grant
#18. One of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another
John Keats
#19. What is this world's delight,
Lightening that mocks the night,
Brief as even as bright
John Keats
#20. O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,
Would all their colours from the sunset take:
From something of material sublime,
Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time
In the dark void of night. For in the world
We jostle, - but my flag is not unfurl'd ...
John Keats
#21. Let me write not for fame and laurel, but from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful even if my night's labors be burnt each morning and no eye ever shine upon them.
John Keats
#22. You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.
Maurice Sendak
#23. How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more Beautiful than Beauty's self.
John Keats
#24. It's been such a deep and amazing journey for me, getting close to John Keats, and also I love Shelley and Byron. I mean, the thing about the Romantic poets is that they've got the epitaph of romantic posthumously. They all died really young, and Keats, the youngest of them all.
Jane Campion
#25. I did ... learn an important distinction in graduate school: a speculation about who had syphilis when is gossip if it's about your friends, a plot element if it's about a character in a novel, and scholarship if it's about John Keats.
Margaret Atwood
#26. That men, who might have tower'd in the van
Of all the congregated world, to fan
And winnow from the coming step of time
All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime
Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,
Have been content to let occasion die,
Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium.
John Keats
#27. Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown, To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne.
John Keats
#28. I don't know if I call myself a poet or not. I would like to, but I'm not really qualified to make that decision, because I come in on such a back door, that I don't know what a Robert Frost or a [John] Keats or a T.S. Eliot would really think of my stuff.
Bob Dylan
#29. Touch'd with miseries
She seem'd at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
- Lamia (John Keats)
John Keats
#30. Open wide the mind's cage-door,
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
John Keats
#31. Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.
Erica Jong
#32. And in a mad trance
Strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings
We decay
Like corpses in a charnel
Fear & Grief
Convulse is & consume us
Day by day
And cold hopes swarm
Like worms within
Our living clay
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#33. Life is divine Chaos. It's messy, and it's supposed to be that way.
John Keats
#34. T this is human life: the war, the deeds,
The disappointment, the anxiety,
Imagination's struggles, far and nigh,
All human; bearing in themselves this good,
That they are still the air, the subtle food,
To make us feel existence, and to shew
How quiet death is.
John Keats
#35. Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair.
John Keats
#36. If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.
Shelby Foote
#37. Shed no tear - O, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more - O, weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
John Keats
#38. There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
John Keats
#39. 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
#40. Poetry's the speech of kings. You're one of those
Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose!
All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see
's been dubbed by [Us] into RP,
Received Pronunciation, please believe [Us]
your speech is in the hands of the Receivers.
Tony Harrison
#41. There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.
John Keats
#42. 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
#43. I am tired of this city. I am tired of its pagan pretensions and false histories. Hyperion is a poet's world devoid of poetry. Keats itself is a mixture of tawdry, false classicism and mindless, boomtown energy.
Dan Simmons
#44. 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
#45. When I read Andrew Motion's biography, I wept. It's something about the purity of the story and how fresh it was because of the love letters Keats wrote.
Jane Campion
#46. Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up to date in their chemical knowledge.
John B. S. Haldane
#47. O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song!
John Keats
#48. To Hope
When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my 'mind's eye' flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head.
John Keats
#49. Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.
John Keats
#50. 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
#51. I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination.
John Keats
#52. Music's golden tongue Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.
John Keats
#53. Already with thee! tender is the night ...
But here there is no light ...
John Keats
#54. Conversation is not a search after knowledge, but an endeavor at effect.
John Keats
#55. When shall we pass a day alone? I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love - but if you should deny me the thousand and first - 'twould put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.
John Keats
#56. All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other people's backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
#57. A little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.
John Keats
#58. It's ridiculous to accept on a blog or in a forum speech what would be seen as hooliganism or delinquency if practiced in a public space."37
Danielle Keats Citron
#61. Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering?
John Keats
#62. A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence because he has no identity-he is continually infirming and filling some other body.
John Keats
#63. You are to me an object so intensely desirable that the air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy
John Keats
#64. Severn - I - lift me up - I am dying - I shall die easy; don't be frightened - be firm, and thank God it has come.
John Keats
#65. We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.
John Keats
#66. So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
John Keats
#67. An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people-it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of the mystery.
John Keats
#68. On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.
Michael Cunningham
#69. Bold Lover, never, never canst Thou kiss, Though winning near the goalyet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though Thou hast not Thy bliss, Forever wilt Thou love, and she be fair
John Keats
#70. 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
#71. Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest.
John Keats
#72. Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new?
John Keats
#73. Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.
John Keats
#74. A thing of beauty is a joy forever: It's loveliness increases: it will never pass into nothingness. Pleasure is oft a visitant, but pain clings cruelty to us.
John Keats
#75. 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.
John Keats
#76. His religion at best is an anxious wish,-like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.
John Keats
#77. I have loved the principle of beauty in all things.
John Keats
#78. Life is but a day:
A fragile dewdrop on its perilious way
From a tree's summit
John Keats
#79. I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?
Jane Campion
#80. O, sorrow! Why dost borrow Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?
John Keats
#81. evidently there was such a thing as "the childhood best friends law," by which any relationship involving two such individuals was immediately forgiven regardless of circumstance and then romanticized beyond any reasonable human being's suspension of disbelief.
Alice Keats
#82. Stop and consider! life is but a day; A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way From a tree's summit.
John Keats
#83. Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
John Keats
#84. That queen of secrecy, the violet.
John Keats
#85. The web of our Life is of mingled Yarn.
John Keats
#86. Keats was getting a reputation just when he was too ill to appreciate it or build on it: his country was taking notice of him just when he would have to leave it.
Jude Morgan
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. What had John Keats said about Negative Capability - holding two opposite ideas in one's mind at the same time without straining to reconcile them?
Dan Simmons
#90. Keats, it must be remembered, was a sensualist. His poems ... reveal him as a man not altogether free from the vulgarities of sensualism, as well as one who was able to transmute it into perfect literature.
Robert Wilson Lynd
#91. It is a flaw In happiness to see beyond our bourn, - It forces us in summer skies to mourn, It spoils the singing of the nightingale.
John Keats
#92. My spirit is too weak
mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.
John Keats
#93. Do you know what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and the rest of them wrote!
Wilfred Owen
#94. The same that oft-times hath
charm'd magic casements,
opening on the foam
of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.
John Keats
#95. Other nights, Ayrs likes me to read him poetry, especially his beloved Keats. He whispers the verses as I recite, as if his voice is leaning on mine.
David Mitchell
#96. 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
#97. A moment's thought is passion's passing knell.
John Keats
#98. Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold
The clear religion of heaven!
John Keats
#99. Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears,
and hopes, and joys, and panting miseries,
Tonight if I may guess, thy beauty wears a smile of such delight,
As brilliant and as bright
As when with ravished, aching, nassal eyes,
Lost in a soft amaze
I gaze, I gaze
John Keats
#100. There was a day when writers actually read," he grumbles. "They could quote Keats and Socrates. Now anyone with a keyboard and a fifth-grade education can call themselves a writer.
J. Lincoln Fenn
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