Keats quotes provide food for the souls of the hopeless romantics everywhere. This month we celebrate his birthday. Though he only lived 25 years, the words he left behind provided him with somewhat of an immortality. Here are 17 Keats quotes to celebrate the month of his birth, while we mourn that it was such a short life.



1. “Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

2. “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.”

3. “Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.”

4. “Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some”

5. “Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced; even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it”

6. “Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.”

7. “Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.”

8. “Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.”

9. “I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom - one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise.”

10. “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.”

11. “How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they?”

12. “Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity there are a hundred that will stand adversity.”

13. “There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.”

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

15. “There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.”

16. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.”

17. “Then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.”

Criticized in life, revered in death -- John Keats was a true poet. Even his tombstone, with the words “Here lies one whose name was writ in water” is poetic genius. This October, let's celebrate the life, albeit a short one, of this rare gem of a man with these 17 Keats quotes.