John Keats (1795-1821) was one of the major figures of Romantic poetry and one of the most beloved and popular of all English poets. Some of his most famous poems include The Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and many others.
1.”In spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.”
2.”Love is my religion–I could die for that.”
3.”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.”
4.”Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”–that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
5.”The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream–he awoke and found it truth.”
6.”He ne’er is crown’d
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead.”
7.”I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.”
8.”O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!”
9.”Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?”
10.”Shed no tear! O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! O weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root’s white core.”
11.”Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain
Clings cruelly to us.”
12.”The music, yearning like a God in pain.”
13.”If Poetry comes not as naturally as Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.”
14.”Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering.”
15.”I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.”
16.”There is an old saying “well begun is half done”–’tis a bad one. I would use instead–Not begun at all ’till half done.”
17.”I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination–what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth–whether it existed before or not.”
18.”A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.”
19.”I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.”
20.”There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.”
