John Quotes

O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!

Already with thee! tender is the night. . . But here there is no light. . .

Health is my expected heaven.

I equally dislike the favor of the public with the love of a woman - they are both a cloying treacle to the wings of independence.

Why employ intelligent and highly paid ambassadors and then go and do their work for them? You don't buy a canary and sing yourself.

So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud, Sweet Hope! celestial influence round me shed Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head.

O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings

A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

Ay, on the shores of darkness there is a light, and precipices show untrodden green; there is a budding morrow in midnight; there is triple sight in blindness keen.

And shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown, To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken.

...yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From out dark spirits.

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.

A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.

He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.

Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures Than I began to think of rhymes and measures: The air that floated by me seem'd to say 'Write! thou wilt never have a better day.

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed / That my own soul has to itself decreed.

But were there ever any Writhed not at passed joy?

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.

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?

O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song!

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

To feel forever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever-or else swoon in death.

His religion at best is an anxious wish,-like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.

O latest born and loveliest vision far of all Olympus' faded hierarchy.

O, sorrow! Why dost borrow Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new?

All clean and comfortable I sit down to write.

I do think better of womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not.

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; and gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.

I always made an awkward bow.

Sweet is the smile of home; the mutual look when hearts are of each other sure.

Sprinkled along the waste of years Full many a soft green isle appears: Pause where we may upon the desert road, Some shelter is in sight, some sacred safe abode.

The voice that breathed o'er Eden, That earliest wedding day.

The watchful mother tarries nigh Though sleep have closed her infant's eye, For should he wake, and find her gone.

Look in, and see Christ's chosen saint In triumph wear his Christ-like chain; No fear lest he should swerve or faint; "His life is Christ, his death is gain.

A civilised man is someone who has discovered something more satisfying than combat.

Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they're the people you have to kill, aren't they?

I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a skyscraper.

Some people are more terrorist than others

If Wellington epitomizes the English gentleman, Eisenhower epitomizes the natural American gentleman.

I can't visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction.

Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues.

For me, my craft is sailing on,Through mists to-day, clear seas anon.Whate'er the final harbor be'T is good to sail upon the sea!

Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.

Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.