Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
John KeatsRead
O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a desire for solitude that is peaceful and beautiful, rather than chaotic and dreary.
In this quote, John Keats reflects on the concept of solitude and how it can be both a refuge and a burden. He longs for a kind of isolation that allows him to escape the noise and confusion of urban life, suggesting that true solitude should be accompanied by serenity and natural beauty rather than the oppressive structures of a city. The imagery used emphasizes his desire for a more harmonious environment in which to experience solitude.
Themes
SolitudeBeautyCityPeaceNature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the beauty of nature versus urban living.
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
No, I donβt wish I knew Heaven was like the picture in my Great Divorce, because, if we knew that, we should know it was no better. The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven.
C. S. LewisRead
It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.
Saul BellowRead
Jacob did not cease to be a Saint because he had to attend to his flocks.
Teresa Of AvilaRead
Here we go mother on the shipless ocean. Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.
Anne CarsonRead
In a jump, the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One only has to snap it with the camera.
Philippe HalsmanRead