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The Painter's Keys, a book by Robert Genn

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John Keats Art Quotes - (27 quotes)

John Keats - From the Aging category:

...I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain... (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Beauty category:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Beauty category:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Beginning category:

There is an old saying 'well begun is half done' – 'tis a bad one. I would use instead – Not begun at all until half done. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Depression category:

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Desire category:

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Drunkenness category:

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been / Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Excellence category:

The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Experience category:

Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced – even a proverb is no proverb to you until your life has illustrated it. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Experience category:

Every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Failure category:

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... (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Fame category:

Then on the shore / Of the wide world / I stand alone, and think / Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Friendship category:

My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on my Tomb. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Gender category:

I do think better of womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Imagination category:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Imagination category:

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. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Indolence category:

He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he's awake who thinks himself asleep. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Love category:

Love is my religion – I could die for that. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Music category:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Poetry category:

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Poetry category:

Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Poetry category:

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

John Keats - From the Recognition category:

Here lies one whose name was writ in water. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Religion category:

My religion is love – I could die for that. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Senses category:

O for a life of sensations rather that of thoughts! (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Subject category:

Scenery is fine – but human nature is finer. (John Keats)

John Keats - From the Truth category:

I can never feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of its beauty. (John Keats)

Editor: Robert Genn

Consultants: Sara Genn, Richard Thompson
Technical Support and Presentation: Andrew Niculescu

Associate Editors:
Scott Altman, Bonnie Austin, Karen Austin, Michele Becker, Joe Blodgett, Norman Brown, Alyce Bryson, Leanne Cadden, Penny Duane, Max Elliot, Derek Franklin, Mardy Grothe, Harry Hartley, Sue Holland, Shawn Jackson, Sue Legault, Tammy McManus, Eric Mewhinney, Bruce Miller, Laura Parrish, Andrea Pratt, Dan Roberts, Shirley Rochon, Gilbert Roy, John Sherlock, Victor Wong,

And many others who have so far contributed one or a few. Please join us and add more at