Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
John KeatsRead
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, ‘Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’ Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the belief that poetry is a unique art form capable of conveying dreams and emotions that mere words cannot fully encapsulate.
In this quote, John Keats emphasizes the transformative power of poetry and how it can articulate the innermost visions and dreams of individuals. He suggests that while everyone has dreams, only those who have cultivated a deep appreciation for language and have been nurtured in their culture can effectively express those dreams. The quote serves as a testament to the essential role of poets in communicating the complexities of human experience and imagination, highlighting a distinction between the mundane and the transcendent.
Themes
PoetryImaginationDreamsExpressionArt
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared at a poetry reading to inspire fellow poets.
More from John Keats
All quotes →Are 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 — make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me —write 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
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The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream.
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The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart.
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Art must be in touch with nature - and wherever that touch is gone, Art degenerates - yet it must be above nature.
Swami VivekanandaRead
To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision.
Jane CampionRead
I'm not performing anymore. I reveal myself to the audience. I reveal myself. That's the show now.
Eddie MurphyRead