1818 Quotes

“All I hope is that I may not lose all interest in human affairs--that the solitary indifference I feel for applause even from the finest Spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think it will--I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful even if my night's labours should be burnt every morning and no eye ever shine upon them.
But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself; but from some character in whose soul I now live.”
― John Keats, The Keats letters, papers, and other relics, forming the Dilke bequest in the Hampstead Public Library, reproduced in fifty-eight collotype facsimiles,