Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
John KeatsRead
Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.
Interpretation
What this quote means
John Keats likens literary individuals to priests, suggesting they have a sacred duty to the art of literature.
In this quote, John Keats reflects on the role of literary figures as akin to a priesthood, highlighting their continuous dedication to the craft of writing and storytelling. Just as priests serve a higher purpose in spiritual matters, literary men are seen as caretakers of language and culture, responsible for preserving, interpreting, and imparting the profound truths of human experience through their works.
Themes
LiteraturePriesthoodArtWritingDedication
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of writers at a literary festival.
More from John Keats
All quotes βAre there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?
John KeatsRead
Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately, and do all you can to console me in it β make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me βwrite the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair.
John KeatsRead
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!Vanishd unseasonably
John KeatsRead
I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.
John KeatsRead
...I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become more acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.
John KeatsRead
Similar quotes
Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.
Paul De ManRead
I think there are more good sportswriters doing more good sportswriting than ever before. But I also believe that the one thing that's largely gone out is what made sport such fertile literary territory - the characters, the tales, the humor, the pain, what Hollywood calls 'the arc.'
Frank DefordRead
Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
Michel De MontaigneRead
It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
Zadie SmithRead
the association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the βnursery,β as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused.
J. R. R. TolkienRead