Quotes to inspire and reflect

Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

There is nothing stable in the world—uproar’s your only music.

O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts!

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination—what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not.

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face

Then on the shore

When I have fears that I may cease to be

To one who has been long in city pent,

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

’Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

Souls of poets dead and gone,

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,

Do not all charms fly

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,

I saw their starved lips in the gloam

I met a lady in the meads

… La belle dame sans merci

Oh, what can ail thee knight at arms

I see a lily on thy brow

‘For cruel ’tis,’ said she,

Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight.

Ever let the fancy roam,

In drear nighted December

And they are gone: aye, ages long ago

Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.