John Keats

At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, …

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.

I scarcely remember counting upon happiness — I look not for it if it be not in the present hour — nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my Window I take part in …

O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!

The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream — he awoke and found it truth.

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.

My chest of books divide amongst my friends.

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

To his sight The husk of natural objects opens quite To the core; and every secret essence there Reveals the elements of good and fair; Making him see, where Learning hath no light.

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast.

None can usurp this height... But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest.

Bright star! would I were stedfast as thou art — Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round …

This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red …

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.

then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.

But were there ever any Writh'd not of passed joy? The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it, Nor numbed sense to steel it, Was never said in rhyme.

In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity.

My spirit is too weak — mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.