Quotes from John Keats

O for ten years, that I may overwhelmMyself in poesy; so I may do the deedThat my own soul has to itself decreed.

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.

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

I have an habitual feeling of my real life having passed, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.

To one who has been long in city pent,'Tis very sweet to look into the fairAnd open face of heaven.

When I have fears that I may cease to beBefore my pen has glean'd my teeming brain.

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.

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.

And other spirits there are standing apartUpon the forehead of the age to come;These, these will give the world another heart,And other pulses. Hear ye not the humOf mighty workings——?Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.

I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of—I am however young writing at random—straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness—without knowing the bearing of any one assertion of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?

Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degreesHer rich attire creeps rustling to her knees.

Asleep in lap of legends old.