Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
John KeatsRead
Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.
Interpretation
What this quote means
John Keats likens literary individuals to priests, suggesting they have a sacred duty to the art of literature.
In this quote, John Keats reflects on the role of literary figures as akin to a priesthood, highlighting their continuous dedication to the craft of writing and storytelling. Just as priests serve a higher purpose in spiritual matters, literary men are seen as caretakers of language and culture, responsible for preserving, interpreting, and imparting the profound truths of human experience through their works.
Themes
LiteraturePriesthoodArtWritingDedication
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of writers at a literary festival.
More from John Keats
All quotes βAre there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?
John KeatsRead
Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately, and do all you can to console me in it β make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me βwrite the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair.
John KeatsRead
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!Vanishd unseasonably
John KeatsRead
I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.
John KeatsRead
...I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become more acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.
John KeatsRead
Similar quotes
Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.
Joseph ConradRead
What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.
Dashiell HammettRead
Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.
Virginia WoolfRead
It perhaps might be said--if any one dared--that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another.
Stephen CraneRead
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.
Ernest HemingwayRead
The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
Margaret AtwoodRead