Top 300 John Keats Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with essence; till we shine, Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold The clear religion of heaven!”

— John Keats

202. “I can feel the daisies growing over me.”

— John Keats

203. “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

204. “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

205. “I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.”

— John Keats

206. “Dry your eyes O dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies.”

— John Keats

207. “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.”

— John Keats

208. “The opinion I have of the generality of women – who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.”

— John Keats

209. “Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth.”

— John Keats

210. “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

211. “If I am destined to be happy with you here – how short is the longest Life.”

— John Keats

212. “Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect.”

— John Keats

213. “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

214. “Real are the dreams of gods, and soothly pass their pleasures in a long immortal dream.”

— John Keats

215. “I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.”

— John Keats

216. “O fret not after knowledge – I have none, and yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge – I have none, and yet the Evening listens.”

— John Keats

217. “When it is moving on luxurious wings, The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings.”

— John Keats

218. “I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!”

— John Keats

219. “When the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.”

— John Keats

220. “I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love – but if you should deny me the thousand and first – ’t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.”

— John Keats

221. “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

222. “Load every rift with ore.”

— John Keats

223. “Wine is only sweet to happy men.”

— John Keats

224. “The air is all softness.”

— John Keats

225. “O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings.”

— John Keats

226. “Shakespeare permeated his whole being, and his influence is to be detected not in a resemblance of style, for Shakespeare can have no imitators, but in a broadening view of life, and increased humanity.”

— John Keats

227. “I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing, the top thing in the world.”

— John Keats

228. “Or thou might’st better listen to the wind, Whose language is to thee a barren noise, Though it blows legend-laden through the trees.”

— John Keats

229. “Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!”

— John Keats

230. “The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.”

— John Keats

231. “Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?”

— John Keats

232. “Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.”

— John Keats

233. “Soft closer of our eyes! Low murmur of tender lullabies!”

— John Keats

234. “Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o’er cast, They always must be with us, or we die.”

— John Keats

235. “The thought, the deadly thought of solitude.”

— John Keats

236. “The poppies hung Dew-dabbled on their stalks.”

— John Keats

237. “You are to me an object so intensely desirable that the air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy.”

— John Keats

238. “Every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer.”

— John Keats

239. “If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true.”

— John Keats

240. “Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.”

— John Keats

241. “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.”

— John Keats

242. “A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.”

— John Keats

243. “You are always new, the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.”

— John Keats

244. “But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings That fill the sky with silver glitterings!”

— John Keats

245. “You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving.”

— John Keats

246. “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

247. “And shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.”

— John Keats

248. “I want a brighter word than bright.”

— John Keats

249. “I would jump down Etna for any public good – but I hate a mawkish popularity.”

— John Keats

250. “When I have fears that I may ceace to be, Before my pen has gleaned my teaming brain”.”

— John Keats