John Keats

A proverb is no proverb to you until life has illustrated it

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest

Who would wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous - who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?

Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing , to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts, not a select party

Health is my expected heaven

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

I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning - and yet it must be

Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel