Life, letters, and literary remains, of John Keats, Volume 1

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Page 95 - Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...
Page 43 - I see, men's judgments are A parcel of their fortunes ; and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them, To suffer all alike.
Page 37 - Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up ; urchins Shall, for that vast of night that they may work, All exercise on thee ; thou shalt be pinch'd As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging Than bees that made 'em.
Page 278 - Free virtue should enthral to force or chance. Their song was partial, but the harmony (What could it less when spirits immortal sing?) Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience.
Page 29 - tis a gentle luxury to weep, That I have not the cloudy winds to keep Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. Such dim-conceived glories of the brain Bring round the heart an indescribable feud ; So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude Wasting of old Time — with a billowy main A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.
Page 266 - This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless ; I long after a stanza or two of Thomson's " Castle of Indolence ; " my passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre all over me, to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness. If I had teeth of pearl, and the breath of lilies, I should call it languor ; but, as I am, I must call it laziness.
Page 278 - Others more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall By doom of battle ; and complain that fate ' Free virtue should enthrall to force or chance.
Page 214 - Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong But what was howling in one breast alone, Silent with expectation of the song, Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.
Page 103 - Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Page 98 - I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately — I cannot bear to be uninterested or unemployed, I, who for so long a time have been addicted to passiveness.

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