1795-1821, British Poet
A proverb is not a proverb to you until life has illustrated it.
John Keats – [Proverbs]
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 – [Beauty]
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 – [Philanthropists]
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats – [Beauty]
Do not all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy? 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, conquer all mysteries by rule and line, empty the haunted air, and gnome mine unweave a rainbow.
John Keats – [Philosophers and Philosophy]
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
John Keats – [Adversity]
Failure is in a sense the highway to success, as each discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true.
John Keats – [Failure]
Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water-lilied pond to eat white currants and see goldfish: and go to the fair in the evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that –one is sure to get into some mess before evening.
John Keats – [Pleasure]
Health is my expected heaven.
John Keats – [Health]
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
John Keats – [Music]
I always made an awkward bow.
John Keats – [Farewells]
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.
John Keats – [Certainty]
I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
John Keats – [Depression]
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 – [Independence]
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 – [Martyrdom]
I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.
John Keats – [Law and Lawyers]
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.
John Keats – [Pride]
I would jump down Etna for any public good — but I hate a mawkish popularity.
John Keats – [Popularity]
I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
John Keats – [Failure]
It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.
John Keats – [Illusion]