"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."

John Keats Literature See all quotes by John Keats →

React to this quote

More by John Keats

See all

“So many, and so many, and such glee.”

“Every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer.”

“Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.”

“You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.”

“A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity—he is continually informing—and filling some other body.”

“Many have original minds who do not think it — they are led away by custom — Now it appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own citadel.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Germany had no material interests and responded spiritually to India. Friedrich Schlegel, hailed as “the inventor of the Oriental Renaissance,” wrote in 1803, “Everything, yes, everything without exce…"

— Friedrich Schlegel

Philosophy1772–1829

#knowledge

"Perhaps the first to approach the fourth dimension from the side of physics, was the Frenchman, Nicole Oresme, of the fourteenth century. In a manuscript treatise, he sought a graphic representation o…"

— Gerald James Whitrow

Science1912–2000

#friendship

"The natural liberty of man, by entering into society, is abridged or restrained, so far only as is necessary for the great end of society, the best good of the whole. In the state of nature every man …"

— Samuel Adams

Politics1722–1803

#justice

"Among all the studies of natural causes and reasons, light most delights the contemplators; among the great things of mathematics, the certainty of its demonstrations most illustriously elevates the m…"

— John Peckham

Religion

#life