ANSWERS: 6
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Easy answer, my children.
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Doing a kind deed... takes me to a higher level of joy.
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My kids.
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Like lots of Keats (and the Romantics in general) it's such a wooly, universal phrase that it can mean anything. Keats other line about truth = beauty is the same. What is Beauty? What is Joy? What is Forever? What is Truth? People can argue about these 'til the cows come home... If, Keats argues, "beauty is truth", then "A thing of *truth* is a joy forever" - lots of things are true and not necessarily pleasant (war, genocide, man's destructive nature). And some people find destruction joyful. So Keats line is "true" for groups who define beauty/truth as that which is destructive. I'd probably say that his sentiment here is "people like things they like." Not very profound. But he was a poet not a philosopher, and most of the time we should look to poets just for "beautiful" combinations of words. (As for your second question: my friends, my books, the infinite possibility of language.)
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I kind of think that most things that are beautiful are beautiful because they don't last forever. Sunsets, life, dragonflies, love... Someohow it's easier to appreciate something more intensely, and more passionately if you know that you can't hold onto it. And in retrospect, things that have been snatched away "too soon" tend to attract our admiration and fuel our imaginations more. Loss is a beautiful thing and sometimes the beauty in something only becomes definite with its ending. (Maybe that's why we idolise people who die young?) That's not really what he meant - but that's what it makes me think of.
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Yes, I would agree with Keats and believe it to be true. The beauty & splendor of God as in His magnificent creation will keep me in awe and joy of the Lord is my strength.
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