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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
- “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.” – 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
- “Poetry should… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.” – John Keats
- “The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.” – John Keats
- “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” – John Keats
- “With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.” – John Keats
- “I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.” – 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
- “The poetry of the earth is never dead.” – John Keats
- “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
- “Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.” – John Keats
- “Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings.” – 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
- “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
- “It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.” – John Keats
- “Now a soft kiss – Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.” – 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
- “There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.” – John Keats
- “What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.” – John Keats
- “ ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” – John Keats
- “Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.” – 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
- “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
- “You are always new, the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.” – John Keats
- “Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.” – John Keats
- “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” – John Keats
- “There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music.” – John Keats
- “He ne’er is crowned with immortality Who fears to follow where airy voices lead.” – John Keats
- “My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.” – 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
- “A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.” – 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
- “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.” – John Keats
- “I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.” – 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
- “Love is my religion – I could die for it.” – John Keats
- “Scenery is fine – but human nature is finer.” – John Keats