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Law
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I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.
-John Keats
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Laziness
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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.
-John Keats
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Legacy
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Even if I was well - I must make myself as good a Philosopher as possible. Now I have had opportunities of passing nights anxious and awake I have found other thoughts intrude upon me. If I should die, said I to myself, I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd.
http://englishhistory.net/keats/letters/brawnefebruary1820.html
-John Keats, Letter to Fanny Brawne, February, 1820
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Love
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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 were dissolving... I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion - I have shudder'd at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr'd for my Religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you. My creed is Love and you are its only tenet - You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist.
-John Keats
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Martyr, Martyrdom
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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
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Music
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Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
-John Keats
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Oceans
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Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds along the pebbled shore of memory!
-John Keats
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Opinion
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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
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Philosophy
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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
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What wreath for Lamia? What for Lycius?
What for the sage, old Apollonius?
Upon her aching forehead be there hung
The leaves of willow and of adder's tongue;
And for the youth, quick, let us strip for him
The thyrsus, that his watching eyes may swim
Into forgetfulness; and, for the sage,
Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage
War on his temples. 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 gnomed mine -
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.
http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.4/bookid.1076/sec.2/
-John Keats, Lamia (part ii), 1818
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Pleasure
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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
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Poetry
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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
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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
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Praise
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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, Letter, October 9, 1818
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Pride
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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
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Proverbial Wisdom
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A proverb is not a proverb to you until life has illustrated it.
-John Keats
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Public
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The Public is a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.
-John Keats
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Reading
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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, On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, 1816
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Recognition
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I would jump down Etna for any public good -- but I hate a mawkish popularity.
-John Keats
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Security
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There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.
-John Keats
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Shame
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There's a blush for won t, and a blush for shan't, and a blush for having done it: There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught, and a blush for just begun it.
-John Keats
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Solitude
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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
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O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings
-John Keats
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Success & Failure
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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
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Truth
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What the imagination seizes as beauty must be the truth.
-John Keats
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Books by and about John Keats