Inspirational Quotes by John Keats (English Poet)

Inspirational Quotations by John Keats (English Poet)

John Keats (1795–1821) is regarded as one of the greatest English poets. On account of his premature death, he has become the archetype of the young and talented but doomed poet.

Born in the City of London, Keats began training at age 16 to become an apothecary and surgeon but abandoned medicine to pursue poetry. His creative development and literary achievement transpired in an extraordinarily short span. He wrote all of his most famous poems, including “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to Melancholy,” and “To Autumn” in one year, 1818–19, and published them in 1820. His poetry is acclaimed as the culmination of the ideas that marked the English Romantic Movement.

At age 25, Keats was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He traveled to the warmer weather in Italy, hoping to improve his health, but died in Rome. His tomb in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome carries the epitaph that he wrote: “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 graven on his tombstone, ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water.'”

Keats’s letters, published in 1848 and 1878, offer insight into his poetic intentions, and are regarded with nearly the veneration given to his poetry; T. S. Eliot called them “the most important ever written by any English poet.”

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Keats

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

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
Topics: Fight, Quarrels, Fighting

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact’ry,
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 feel 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.
—John Keats
Topics: Death, Dying

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
Topics: Poetry, Art, Poets

O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel’s song!
—John Keats
Topics: Romance

Though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though the carpet were of silk, the curtains of the morning clouds; the chairs and sofa stuffed with cygnet’s down; the food manna, the wine beyond claret, the window opening on Winander Mere, I should not feel—or rather my happiness would not be so fine, as my solitude is sublime.
—John Keats
Topics: Solitude

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
Topics: Poetry, Poets

Away with old Romance! Away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts; Away with love-verses, sugar’d in rhyme, the intrigues, amours of idlers; Fitted for only banquets of the night where dancers to late music slide; The unhealthy pleasures, ex
—John Keats
Topics: Romance

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.
—John Keats
Topics: Lawyers, Law

What is more gentle than a wind in summer?
—John Keats
Topics: Nature

A proverb is not a proverb to you until life has illustrated it.
—John Keats
Topics: Proverbial Wisdom, Proverbs

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
Topics: Charity

I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave – thank God for the quiet grave
—John Keats
Topics: Death

Who would wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous—who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?
—John Keats
Topics: Fame

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
—John Keats
Topics: Music

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.
—John Keats
Topics: Certainty

Undescribed sounds, that come a-swooning over hollow grounds, and wither drearily on barren moors.
—John Keats

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

I always made an awkward bow.
—John Keats
Topics: Last Words

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
Topics: Independence

The poetry of the earth is never dead.
—John Keats
Topics: Poetry

Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings.
—John Keats
Topics: Angels, Philosophy

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
Topics: Pleasure

It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.
—John Keats
Topics: Illusion

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
—John Keats
Topics: Tourism, Reading, Travel

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 hosts Canary wine?
—John Keats
Topics: Wine

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
Topics: Opinions, Opinion

Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness.
—John Keats
Topics: Autumn

I would jump down Etna for any public good—but I hate a mawkish popularity.
—John Keats
Topics: Popularity

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