“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”
Quality is far more important and valuable than quantity. And this is particularly well represented by English poet John Keats.
He only lived to the age of 25 and he only actively wrote poetry for six years, but he is widely regarded as one of the biggest and most influential figures of the Romantic period in the early 19th century. John Keats wasn’t fully appreciated while he was alive; it wasn’t until some time after his death that his reputation and popularity grew to what they are today. In a sense, he really did only live for “three summer days,” but he made a monumental impact in that short time.
Consider how so many people begrudgingly go through the motions each day, living out their “fifty common years” in silence and mediocrity. Life is too short and too precious to let those days go to waste. We have to live them to their fullest. And it is through this philosophy that the name of John Keats can easily be uttered in the same breath as a William Shakespeare or John Milton. Perhaps I’m drawn to these great writers, both because of my chosen profession and the fact that I graduated from university with a English Literature minor, but you can see how these universal truths hold true.
The quote above was taken from a love letter Keats wrote to Fanny Brawne and love is surely a wonderful thing. At the same time, that sort of mindset also applies to life in general. Quality is far better than quantity.
When we were in Rome earlier this month, we paid a visit to the famous Spanish Steps. John Keats lived out his final days in an apartment near the base of the stairs and a plaque, shown above, is now there in his honor. Keats was taken from this world at far too young of an age (he died from tuberculosis) and it is said by many that if he had lived as long and wrote as much as Wordsworth did, Keats would instead be seen as the representative of the Romantic period.
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”
John Keats may have lived “but three summer days,” but the “loveliness” of his work continues to increase to this day.
Well, tuberculosis or consumption as then called was a fashionable disease to contract those days… Anyway, in the vein of this post, I think that quality and quantity should not be viewed as two things that can each only come at the expense of the other. In a sense, quality is part of quantity and vice versa. Without quality, quantity would make little sense, and vice versa. I seem to have detected kind of dichotomy in your post.
And I don’t think dichotomy is the word that describes how the world runs.
I think every day about the things I worry about and the life my 8 year now has to live after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in February.
I should just be happy to be on the top side of the grass, and have the time I have with my family and my precious daughter.