“I scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness — I look not for it if it be not in the present hour — nothing startles me beyond the Moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights — or if a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the Gravel.” - Keats in a letter to Benjamin Bailey dated 22 November 1817
“I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity — it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance. . . Its touches of Beauty should never be half way therby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the Luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it. . . . If Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. . . . Perhaps I ought to be content. I have great reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.” - Keats in a letter to John Taylor dated 27 February 1818
“. . . after all I do think better of Womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not.” - Keats in a letter to Benjamin Bailey dated 18 July 1818
“I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow.” - Keats in his last letter to Charles Brown dated 30 November 1820
“– then on the shore/Of the wide world I stand alone, and think/Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.” - Keats’ Sonnet: When I have fears

















