John Keats

The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it.

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.

The world is too brutal for me-I am glad there is such a thing as the grave-I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.

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.

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores

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

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

I have good reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.

Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not

Open afresh your rounds of starry folds, Ye ardent Marigolds.

Music's golden tongue Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.

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.

Some say the world is a vale of tears, I say it is a place of soul-making.

All clean and comfortable I sit down to write.

Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.

Many have original minds who do not think it - they are led away by custom!

I never can feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of its beauty.

It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man's life with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of Time.