John Keats
I never knew before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was; I did not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up. But if you will fully love me, though there may be some fire, 'twill not be more than we can bear when moistened and bedewed with Pleasures.Collection: Love
Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.Collection: Food
If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true.Collection: Beautiful
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.Collection: Happiness
That which is creative must create itself.Collection: Creative
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.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Knowledge
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; 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; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.Collection: Book
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not – for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty . . .Collection: Passion
Where soil is, men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers.Collection: Weed
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--- No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever 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.Collection: Sweet
Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Running
I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of I am, however young, writing at random straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?Collection: Writing
What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon poet.Collection: Delight
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.Collection: Drinking
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.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Night
one of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into anotherCollection: Mind
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.Collection: Sweet
I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion and I could die for that. I could die for you.Collection: Inspiration
Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown, To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne.Collection: Gratitude
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.Collection: Sweet
But were there ever any Writhed not at passed joy?Collection: Joy
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.Collection: Life
I always made an awkward bow.Collection: Farewell
I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving: O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, With a silken thread of my own hands' weaving.Collection: Sweet
O for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed / That my own soul has to itself decreed.Collection: Years
Severn - I - lift me up - I am dying - I shall die easy; don't be frightened - be firm, and thank God it has come.Collection: Thank God
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.Collection: Self
My passions are all asleep from my having slumbered till nearly eleven and weakened the animal fiber all over me to a delightful sensation about three degrees on this sight of faintness - if I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor - but as I am I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibers of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable frown. Neither poetry, nor ambition, nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me.Collection: Love
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?Collection: Love
I never was in love - yet the voice and the shape of a woman has haunted me these two days.Collection: Two
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.Collection: Life
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours.Collection: Midnight
I would jump down Etna for any public good - but I hate a mawkish popularity.Collection: Hate
The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.Collection: Music
Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new?Collection: Passion
Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.Collection: Night
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.Collection: Summer
I do think better of womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not.Collection: Caring
You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.Collection: Artist
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!Collection: Powerful