A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness;
- Source
- Endymion, Book I, 1818
- Written
- 1818
About this quotation
These are the opening lines of Endymion, Keats’s long poem on the shepherd loved by the moon goddess. The poem was attacked by hostile reviewers when it appeared in 1818, but this first line outlived the criticism.