Quotes & Sayings About Keats

Conversation is not a search after knowledge, but an endeavor at effect. — John Keats

Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad ... — John Keats

Knowledge enormous makes a god of me. — John Keats

Asleep in lap of legends old. — John Keats

Keats's odes are among my favorite poems ever. As are Neruda's. So yes, I think my poems are odes, though I really just see those titles as ways of more or less orienting the poem. I've never thought about this until now, but I guess you could say that one effect of all the titles, their pervasiveness in the book, might be to once again, as so many other things do, put into question the meaning of the word "for," which I suppose is one of the great human questions: what is all this for? Why, and for whom, are we doing whatever we are doing? — Matthew Zapruder

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. — John Keats

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

Despite what you've read, your sadness is not beautiful. No one will see you in the bookstore, curled up with your Bukowski, and want to save you.
Stop waiting for a salvation that will not come from the grey-eyed boy looking for an annotated copy of Shakespeare,
for an end to your sadness in Keats.
He coughed up his lungs at 25, and flowery words cannot conceal a life barely lived.
Your life is fragile, just beginning, teetering on the violent edge of the world.
Your sadness will bury you alive, and you are the only one who can shovel your way out with hardened hands and ragged fingernails, bleeding your despair into the unforgiving earth.
Darling, you see, no heroes are coming for you. Grab your sword, and don your own armor. — Emily Palermo

Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu — 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

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

O fret not after knowledge - I have none, and yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge - I have none, and yet the Evening listens. — John Keats

Because it's a fucking disaster to be creative when you know you're not Mozart or Keats. Dammit, I got tired of scratching around in my past. There's nothing in me to justify the pretension of creativity. This came before anything, before you, before Raquel, this is a matter of my own emptiness, my awareness of my own limits, maybe my sterility. Does what I'm saying to you seem awful? Now you want to come along and sell me an illusion, which I don't believe in but which does make me believe that either you're a fool or you underestimate my intelligence. Why don't you just leave me alone, so I can fill the emptiness in my own way? Let me see things for myself, learn if something can still grow in my soul, an idea, a faith, because I swear to you, Laura, my soul is more desolate than this rock landscape you see here ... why? — Carlos Fuentes

Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss. — John Keats

Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die. — John Keats

To John Keats Whose Name Was Writ in Eternity — Dan Simmons

I look upon fine phrases as a lover. - John Keats — Beatrice K. Otto

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs
for their religion
I have shuddered at it,
I shudder no more.
I could be martyred for my religion.
Love is my religion
and I could die for that.
I could die for you.
My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet. — John Keats

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

A drainless shower
Of light is poesy: 'tis the supreme of power;
'Tis might half slumbering on its own right arm. — John Keats

When I was a child I had a fishless aquarium. My father set it up for me with gravel and plants and pebbles before he'd got the fish and I asked him to leave it as it was for a while. The pump kept up a charming burble, the green-gold light was wondrous when the room was dark. I put in a china mermaid and a tin horseman who maintained a relationship like that of the figures on Keat's Grecian urn except that the horseman grew rusty. Eventually fish were pressed upon me and they seemed an intrusion, I gave them to a friend. All that aquarium wanted was the sound of the pump, the gently waving plants, the mysterious pebbles and the silent horseman forever galloping to the mermaid smiling in the green-gold light. I used to sit and look at them for hours. The mermaid and the horseman were from my father. I have them in a box somewhere here, I'm not yet ready to take them out and look at them again. — Russell Hoban

Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up to date in their chemical knowledge. — John B. S. Haldane

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

Who, of men, can tell
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,
If human souls did never kiss and greet? — John Keats

Yet it is beautiful to discover that there's another chapter to the story, where we discover deep unity beneath, and supporting, the diversity of appearance. All colors are one thing, seen in different states of motion. That is science's brilliantly poetic answer to Keats's complaint that science "unweaves a rainbow. — Frank Wilczek

Notwithstanding the prevalent notion that the French poets are the sympathetic heirs of classic culture, it appears to me that they are not so imbued with the true classic spirit, art, and mythology as some of our English poets, notably Keats and Shelley. — William Shakespeare

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness, - -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. — John Keats

Beauty is truth, truth beauty — John Keats

I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource. — John Keats

The open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown - the Air is our robe of state - the Earth is our throne, and the Sea a mighty minstrel playing before it. — John Keats

One winter morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see. — Ezra Jack Keats

No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures
Than I began to think of rhymes and measures:
The air that floated by me seem'd to say
'Write! thou wilt never have a better day. — John Keats

A little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sigh that silence heaves. — John Keats

Why employ intelligent and highly paid ambassadors and then go and do their work for them? You don't buy a canary and sing yourself. — John Keats

When Keats says: 'Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses', what he means is that we don't necessarily believe what a poem is saying if it comes out and tells us in an absolutely head-on, in-your-face way; we only believe it to be true if we feel it to be true. — Andrew Motion

The poetry of earth is never dead When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide I cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

Tis "the witching time of night", / Orbed is the moon and bright, / And the stars they glisten, glisten, / Seeming with bright eyes to listen - — John Keats

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold. — John Keats

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

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination. — 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

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

The splendors of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

Johnny sighed in the darkness. "I don't understand the exact purpose of the Keats Project or the other Old Earth analogs, but I suspect that it is part of a TechnoCore project going back at least seven standard centuries to realize the Ultimate Intelligence."
"The Ultimate Intelligence," I said, exhaling smoke. "Uh-huh. So the TechnoCore is trying to ... what? ... to build God."
"Yes. — Dan Simmons

I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen. — John Keats

You are always new to me. — John Keats

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

Already with thee! tender is the night ...
But here there is no light ... — John Keats

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

Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown, To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne. — John Keats

I cannot capture your grace in words; I am profoundly enchanted by the flowing complexity in you. — John Keats

He, who is gone, was one of the very kindest friends I possessed, and yet he was not kinder perhaps to me, than to others. His intense mind and powerful feelings would, I truly believe, have done the world some service, had his life been spared but he was of too sensitive a nature and thus he was destroyed! — John Keats

In a good-natured way he had almost decided that Princeton was one part deadly Philistines and one part deadly grinds, and to find a person who could mention Keats without stammering, yet evidently washed his hands, was rather a treat. — F Scott Fitzgerald

DiMaggio's grace came to represent more than athletic skill in those years. To the men who wrote about the game, it was a talisman, a touchstone, a symbol of the limitless potential of the human individual. That an Italian immigrant, a fisherman's son, could catch fly balls the way Keats wrote poetry or Beethoven wrote sonatas was more than just a popular marvel. It was proof positive that democracy was real. On the baseball diamond, if nowhere else, America was truly a classless society. DiMaggio's grace embodied the democracy of our dreams. — David Halberstam

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

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

As for how criticism of Keats' poetry relates to criticism of my own work, I'll leave that for others to decide. — Jane Campion

What can I do with these people? They come to the risk so dutifully. Are delighted by anecdotes that give them Poetry. Are grateful to be told of diagonals that give them Painting. Good people. But stubborn when warned the beast is not domestic. How can I persuade them that the dark, soulful Keats was five feet one? Liked fighting and bear-baiting? I can't explain the red hair. Nor say how you died so full of lust for Fanny Brawne. I will tell them of Semele. — Jack Gilbert

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night! — John Keats

Give me books, fruit, French wine, fine weather and a little music.. — John Keats

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

My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on my Tomb. — John Keats

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

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

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

What I deeply want ... is for Rumi to become vitally present for readers, part of what John Keats called our soul-making, that process that is both collective and uniquely individual, that happens outside time and space and inside, that is the ocean we all inhabit and each singular droplet-self. — Coleman Barks

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

What, man, do you mistake the hollow sky For a thronged tavern ... ? — John Keats

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate. — John Keats

Literary men are ... a perpetual priesthood. — John Keats

John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on. — J.D. Salinger

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

Music's golden tongue Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor. — John Keats

From his companions, and set forth to walk, Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk: Over the solitary hills he fared, Thoughtless at first, but ere eve's star appeared His phantasy was lost, where reason fades, In the calm'd twilight of Platonic shades. Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near - Close to her passing, in indifference drear, His silent sandals swept the mossy green; So neighbour'd to him, and yet so unseen — 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

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

Books, like good friends, should be few and well chosen. SAMUEL PATERSON — John Keats

Is it a comb, a fan, a torn dress, a curtain, a bed, an empty rice-bin? It hardly seems to matter. The Chinese poet makes a heart-breaking poetry out of these quite as naturally as Keats did out of the song of a nightingale heard in a spring garden. It is rarely dithyrambic, rarely high-pitched: part of its charm is its tranquility, its self-control. And the humblest reads it with as much emotion as the most learned. — Conrad Aiken

O, sorrow! Why dost borrow Heart's lightness from the merriment of May? — John Keats

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

Great lecturers seldom hesitate to use dramatic tricks to enshrine their precepts in the minds of their audiences, and at Yale perhaps Chauncey B. Tinker was the most noted. To read one of his lectures was like reading a monologue of the great actress Ruth Draper
you missed the main point. You missed the drop in his voice as he approached the death in Rome of the tubercular Keats; you missed the shaking tone in which he described the poet's agony for the absent Fanny with him his love had never been consummated; you missed the grim silence of the end. — Louis Auchincloss

It ought to come like the leaves to the trees, or it better not come at all. — John Keats

The two divinest things the world has got - A lovely woman and a rural spot. — John Keats

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

What does the novel know? It has no practical or educational aim; yet it knows what ordinary knowledge cannot seize. The novel's intricate tangle of character-and-incident alights on the senses with a hundred cobwebby knowings fanning their tiny threads, stirring up nuances and disclosures. The arcane designs and driftings of metaphor - what James called the figure in the carpet, what Keats called negative capability, what Kafka called explaining the inexplicable - are that the novel knows. — Cynthia Ozick

My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it. — John Keats

Finally, to hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language. English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. It has all grown one way. The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry. There is nothing ready made for him. He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the people of Babel did in the beginning), so to crush them together that a brand new word in the end drops out. Probably it will be something laughable. — Virginia Woolf

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

X.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - "La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
XI.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing. — John Keats

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

Yet I can read. Knowledge enormous makes a God of me. Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, majesties, Sovran voices, agonies, Creations and destroyings, all at once pour into the wide hollows of my brain. And deify me, as if some blithe wine or bright elixir peerless I had drunk, and so become immortal. — John Keats

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

Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid. — John Keats

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? — John Keats

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

Accepting a religion may be more like enjoying a poem, or following the football. It might be a matter of immersion in a set of practices. Perhaps the practices have only an emotional point, or a social point. Perhaps religious rituals only serve necessary psychological and social ends. The rituals of birth, coming of age, or funerals do this. It is silly to ask whether a marriage ceremony is true or false. People do not go to a funeral service to hear something true, but to mourn, or to begin to stop mourning, or to meditate on departed life. It can be as inappropriate to ask whether what is said is true as to ask whether Keats's ode to a Grecian urn is true. The poem is successful or not in quite a different dimension, and so is Chartres cathedral, or a statue of the Buddha. They may be magnificent, and moving, and awe-inspiring, but not because they make statements that are true or false. — Simon Blackburn

God, listen to him. Fucking pathetic, going on about the girl like he was Keats or something. — Shayla Black

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