110+ John Keats Quotes On Friendship, Death And Beauty

John Keats was an English Romantic poet who was active in the early 19th century. He is best known for his odes, such as "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn". His works are characterized by their expressive language, vivid imagery, and philosophical exploration of themes such as beauty, mortality, and love. Following is our collection on famous quotes by John Keats on love, life, friendship.

Top 10 John Keats Quotes

1. Through the dancing poppies stole A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul.
2. A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.
6. Open afresh your rounds of starry folds, Ye ardent Marigolds.
7. I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.
8. And when thou art weary I'll find thee a bed, Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head.
9. Neither poetry, nor ambition, nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me.
10. Souls of poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host's Canary wine?

John Keats Image Quotes

You are always new, the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest. — John Keats

They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus. — John Keats

Love is my religion - I could die for it. — John Keats

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters. — John Keats

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. — John Keats

John Keats Short Quotes

• My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.
• You are always new, the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.
• A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
• The creature has a purpose, and his eyes are bright with it.
• Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.
• Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
• Like a mermaid in sea-weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest.
• Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
• Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.
• I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

John Keats Quotes About Love

Love is my religion - I could die for it. — John Keats

--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. — John Keats

I have so much of you in my heart. — John Keats

I don't need the stars in the night I found my treasure All I need is you by my side so shine forever — John Keats

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain. — John Keats

I love your hills and I love your dales, And I love your flocks a-bleating; but oh, on the heather to lie together, With both our hearts a-beating! — John Keats

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

I Cannot Exist Without You. I Am Forgetful Of Everything But Seeing You Again. — 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. — John Keats

was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep? — John Keats

John Keats Quotes About Life

Life is but a day; A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way From a tree's summit. — John Keats

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

We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author. — John Keats

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

A proverb is not a proverb to you until life has illustrated it. — John Keats

I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving. — John Keats

A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory. — John Keats

For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses. — John Keats

Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is - Love, forgive us! - cinders, ashes, dust. — John Keats

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it. — John Keats

John Keats Quotes About Death

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

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. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

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

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

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! — John Keats

This Grave contains all that was Mortal of a Young English Poet Who on his Death Bed in the Bitterness of his Heart at the Malicious Power of his Enemies Desired these words to be engraved on his Tomb Stone "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." — John Keats

I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave - thank God for the quiet grave — John Keats

I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death. — John Keats

Death is Life's high meed. — John Keats

John Keats Quotes About Beauty

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

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. — John Keats

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be the truth. — John Keats

When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. — John Keats

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

I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion and I could die for that. I could die for you. — John Keats

Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not — John Keats

...yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From out dark spirits. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self. — John Keats

John Keats Quotes About Nature

If poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, then it better not come at all. — John Keats

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters. — John Keats

Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer. — John Keats

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. — John Keats

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

To one who has been long in city pent, ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. — John Keats

What is more gentle than a wind is summer? — John Keats

Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one! — John Keats

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. — John Keats

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

John Keats Quotes About Poetry

They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus. — John Keats

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

A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity he is continually informing and filling some other body. — John Keats

The poetry of the earth is never dead. — 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

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

The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man; it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself. — John Keats

I find I cannot exist without Poetry — John Keats

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song. — John Keats

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

John Keats Quotes About Truth

We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth." — John Keats

To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty — John Keats

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

Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth. — John Keats

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

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. - Ode to a Grecian Urn — John Keats

The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth. — John Keats

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

Beauty is truth, truth beauty — John Keats

The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream-he awoke and found it truth. — John Keats

John Keats Quotes About Imagination

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. — John Keats

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

How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not. — John Keats

one of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another — John Keats

I came to feel how far above All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood, All earthly pleasure, all imagined good, Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss. — 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. — John Keats

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 ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness. — John Keats

The grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead. — John Keats

John Keats Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine - how good how fine. It went down all pulpy, slushy, oozy, all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large, beatified Strawberry. — John Keats

They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus. — John Keats

Love is my religion - I could die for it. — John Keats

You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore. — John Keats

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters. — John Keats

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. — John Keats

My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it.... I never felt my mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment- upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses — John Keats

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. — John Keats

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

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

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

Dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth! On for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth. — John Keats

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet. — John Keats

...I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become more acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. — John Keats

Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know. — John Keats

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

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top. — John Keats

'Tis the witching hour of night, Orbed is the moon and bright. And the stars they glisten, glisten, Seeming with bright eyes to listen- For what listen they? — John Keats

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

That which is creative must create itself. — John Keats

You are always new. The last of your kisses was even the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. — John Keats

Even bees, the little almsmen of spring bowers, know there is richest juice in poison-flowers. — John Keats

Feeling well that breathed words Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps Of grasshoppers against the sun. — John Keats

Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes. — John Keats

Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From low hung branches; little space they stop; But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek; Then off at once, as in a wanton freak: Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings Pausing upon their yellow flutterings. — John Keats

The air is all softness. — John Keats

Four seasons fill the measure of the year; there are four seasons in the minds of men. — John Keats

As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden,- "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;" or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity. — John Keats

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep? — John Keats

The Public - a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility. — John Keats

I want a brighter word than bright — John Keats

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. Not a select party. — John Keats

I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever dew; And on thy cheek a fading rose Fast withereth too. — John Keats

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill, The air was cooling, and so very still, That the sweet buds which with a modest pride Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, Had not yet lost those starry diadems Caught from the early sobbing of the morn. — John Keats

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

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery. — John Keats

Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced. — John Keats

He ne'er is crowned with immortality Who fears to follow where airy voices lead. — John Keats

There is a budding morrow in midnight. — John Keats

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine - Unweave a rainbow. — John Keats

Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success. — John Keats

The poppies hung Dew-dabbled on their stalks. — John Keats

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,-- Nature's observatory--whence the dell, In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell. — John Keats

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

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence. — John Keats

Soft closer of our eyes! Low murmur of tender lullabies! — John Keats

I am certain I have not a right feeling towards women -- at this moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When I was a schoolboy I thought a fair woman a pure Goddess; my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, though she knew it not. — John Keats

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

She press'd his hand in slumber; so once more He could not help but kiss her and adore. — John Keats

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that ofttimes hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. — John Keats

Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain Clings cruelly to us. — John Keats

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings. — John Keats

It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores — John Keats

The excellence of every Art is its intensity. — John Keats

Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect. — John Keats

Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. — John Keats

Life Lessons by John Keats

1. John Keats teaches us to embrace beauty and truth in life, and to strive for a life of joy and passion.
2. He encourages us to be inspired by the world around us, to find beauty in the small moments, and to appreciate the beauty of nature.
3. He reminds us to be brave and to take risks in order to pursue our dreams and to live life to the fullest.