100+ Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1838). “The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Preface. Formula fidei de ss. Trinitate. Nightly prayer. Notes on the book of common prayer; Hooker; Field; Donne; Henry More; Heinrichs; Hacket; Jeremy Taylor; The pilgrim's progress; John Smith. Letter to a godchild”, p.186

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Wisdom, Life Wisdom, Knowledge And Wisdom

quote there is one art of which people should be masters the art of reflection samuel taylor coleridge Quotes

And in today already walks tomorrow.

Topics: Appreciation, Teacher, Today

Silence does not always mark wisdom.

Topics: Inspirational, Wisdom, Silence, Brighten Your Day, Reticence

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

Topics: Wise, Ideas, History

Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Friendship, Snow Falling, Melting Snow

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

Topics: Fear, Politics, Ends, Fanaticism

'Tis a month before the month of May, And the spring comes slowly up this way.

Topics: Spring, Way, Months

What comes from the heart goes to the heart

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1856). “Seven lectures on Shakespeare and Milton”, p.45

Topics: Attitude, Angel, Heart

Lovely was the death Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power, He on the thought-benighted Skeptic beamed Manifest Godhead.

Topics: Lovely, Christ, Holy

Talk of the devil, and his horns appear.

Topics: Horny, Devil, Horns

Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that every Thing has a Life of its own, and that we are all one Life.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Believe, Wiccan

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

Topics: Summer, Usual, End Of Summer

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

Topics: Children, Would Be, World, Inhuman

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

Topics: Business, Communication, Past, Language And Communication, Language Arts

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated)”, p.3340, Delphi Classics

Topics: Hope, Medicine, Physicians, Ingenious

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

Topics: People, Genius, Degrees

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

Topics: Men, Sea, Rivers, Caverns

To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.

Topics: Believe, Growth, Different

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.

Topics: Sleep, Beloved, Gentle, Funny Sleep

A great mind must be androgynous.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Two Volumes”, p.96

Topics: Mind, Great Minds, Androgynous

He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.

Topics: Inspirational Life, Preparation, Moments

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if,when you awoke,you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “What If You Slept ...”

Topics: Love, Beautiful, Dream

A man's desire is for the woman, but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

Topics: Women, Men, Desire

All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.

Topics: Life, Love You, Passion, Love Is All You Need

He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.

Topics: Love, Life, Prayer, Praying To God, I Pray To God

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

Topics: Ignorance, Understanding, Ignorant, Understanding Yourself

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

Topics: Writing, Order, Poetry, Prose Poetry, Best Poem

Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist.

Topics: Atheist, Heart, Men, Strength Of Mind

Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.

Topics: Faith, Philosophy, Good Christian

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.

Topics: Mother, Father, Heart, Mothers Day Love, Dear Mother

The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

Topics: Inspirational, Marriage, Men, Cynical Love, Anti Love

A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.

Topics: Mothers Day, Mom, Alive, Mother's Day, Mother Day Poems

I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

Topics: Support, Tolerance, Intolerance

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.

Topics: Retirement, Humor, Mind, Good Sense Of Humor

No one does anything from a single motive.

Topics: Inspirational, Motivation, Doe

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Topics: Friendship, Real Friends, Tree

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

Topics: Statistics, Poetic, Moments, Suspension Of Disbelief, Suspension

Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.

source: - Biographia Literaria ch. 13 (1817)

Topics: Imagination, Perception, Agents, Power Of Imagination, Brainstorming

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.

source: - The Friend (1828)

Topics: Life, Happiness, Smile, Most Heartfelt, Looking For Happiness

The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.

Topics: Imagination, Mind, Perception

Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.

Topics: Flower, Love Is, Tree, Love And Flower

Readers may be divided into four classes: 1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied. 2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. 3) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. 4) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also

Topics: Book, Reading, Glasses, Moguls, Dregs

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

Topics: Voice, Earth, Praise God, Praises To God

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Topics: Communication, Imagination, Language, Written Language, Plain Language

Our own heart, and not other men's opinion, forms our true honor.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1853). “The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Prose and Verse”, p.200

Topics: Inspirational, Heart, Men

All men, even the most surly are influenced by affection.

Topics: Famous Love, Men, Affection, Surly

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Topics: People, Criticism, Talent, Biographers

Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.

Topics: Men, Glasses, Alcohol

He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.

Topics: Humility, Church, Good Christian, Theist

Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from.

Topics: Writing, Plagiarism, Stolen

A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune.

Topics: Sleep, Night, June

The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings.

Topics: Wise, Feelings, Opponents

Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word.

Topics: Poetry, Odes, Causes, Great Poet, Fugitive

For she belike hath drunken deep Of all the blessedness of sleep.

Topics: Sleep, Blessedness

How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an autumnal day!

Topics: Fall, Wind, Life And Death, Falling Leaves

I must reject fluids and ethers of all kinds, magnetical, electrical, and universal, to whatever quintessential thinness they may be treble distilled, and as it were super-substantiated.

Topics: May, Kind, Electricity, Quintessential, Electrical

May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling, Silent as though they watched the sleeping earth!

Topics: Stars, Sleep, Dwelling

A stately pleasure-dome decree.

Topics: Domes, Classic, Pleasure

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel-dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

Topics: Angel, Heart, Dark, Misgivings, Ominous

My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, and not of the intellectual faculties.

Topics: Addiction, Intellectual, Madness, Volition

The primary notion i hold to be the Living Power.

Topics: Imagination, Notion

Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises.

Topics: Thinking, Facts, Conclusion, Premises

He knows well the evening star, and once when he awoke, in a most distressful mood (some inward pain had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream), I hurried with him to our orchard plot, and he beheld the moon, and hushed at once. Suspends his sobs and laughs most silently. While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears, did glitter in the yellow moonbeam.

Topics: Dream, Stars, Pain, Strange Things, Moonbeams

He saw a lawyer killing a viper on a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind of Cain and his brother Abel.

Topics: Brother, Mind, Devil, Vipers, Abel

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Topics: Evil, Be Good

Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating the truth.

Topics: Doe, Intention, Communicate, Veracity

Within today, tomorrow is already walking.

Topics: Today, Tomorrow, Walking

For mother's sake the child was dear, and dearer was the mother for the child.

Topics: Mother, Children, Sake

That saints will aid if men will call; For the blue sky bends over all!

Topics: Men, Blue, Sky, Blue Sky

Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases, which he does not choose to acknowledge openly with his own sign manual.

Topics: Pseudonyms, Doe, Chance

Come, come thou bleak December wind, And blow the dry leaves from the tree! Flash, like a Love-thought, thro'me, Death And take a Life that wearies me.

Topics: Blow, Wind, Tree, Love Thoughts, Dry Leaves

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions.

Topics: Life Is, Life Happiness, Minutes

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

Topics: Dream, Sight

...from the time of Kepler to that of Newton, and from Newton to Hartley, not only all things in external nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life and organization, and even of the intellect and moral being, were conjured within the magic circle of mathematical formulae.

Topics: Life, Circles, Organization, Kepler

The nightmare Life-in-Death was she.

Topics: Life, Nightmare, Leprosy

He holds him with his glittering eye, And listens like a three years' child.

Topics: Children, Eye, Years

I have found in the Bible words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterance for my hidden griefs and pleadings for my shame and feebleness.

Topics: Bible, Christian, Song

You do not believe, you only believe that you believe.

Topics: Believe, Belief

So will I build my altar in the fields, And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.

Topics: Sweet, Flower, Blue, Incense

The love of indolence is universal, or next to it.

Topics: Next, Laziness, Indolence

Men, I think, have to be weighed, not counted.

Topics: Thinking, Men, Statistics

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners.

Topics: Army, Essence, Gentleman, Gentlemanly

About, about, in reel and rout the death fires danced at night.

Topics: Night, Fire, Ballet

The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece of paper in their way, but took it up; for possibly, they say, the name of God may be on it. Though there was a little superstition in this, yet truly there is nothing but good religion in it, if we apply it to men. Trample not on any; there may be some work of grace there, that thou knowest not of. The name of God may be written upon that soul thou treadest on; it may be a soul that Christ thought so much of, as to give His precious blood for it; therefore despise it not.

Topics: Men, Blood, Names

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures, love and light, And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.

Topics: Mean, Angel, Night, Angel Of Death

A spring of love gush'd from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware.

Topics: Spring, Heart, My Heart

Imagination that compares and contrasts with what is around as well as what is better and worse is the living power and prime agent of all human perception judgement and emotional reaction.

Topics: Gratitude, Emotional, Imagination, Emotional Reactions, Compare And Contrast

Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes.

Topics: Marriage, Couple, Unhappy

Those who best know human nature will acknowledge most fully what a strength light hearted nonsense give to a hard working man

Topics: Hard Work, Men, Light, Working Man, Light Hearted

An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches with spire steeples which point as with a silent finger to the sky and stars.

Topics: Stars, Men, Sky, Spires, Steeples

Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.

Topics: House, Palaces, Events

To all new truths, or renovation of old truths, it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about-to-be renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive wreath.

Topics: Truth, Ravens, Wreaths, Renovation

Why aren't more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren't within everybody's reach.

Topics: Life, Success, Country, Great Author

General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree are to its leaves

Topics: Roots, Tree, Facts

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud. We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, all melodies the echoes of that voice, all colours a suffusion from that light.

Topics: Sweet, Loss, Echoes, Sweet Voice, Hearing Loss

The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

Topics: Faults, Attention, Prose, Plain Language

The once red leaf, the last of its clan, that dances as often as dance it can.

Topics: Ballet, Red, Lasts, Twigs, Clans

We must not be guilty of taking the law into our own hands, and converting it from what it really is to what we think it ought to be.

Topics: Thinking, Guilty

A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.

Topics: Men, Opposites, Class

Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the Earth.

Topics: Issues, Clouds, Light, Luminous

What is one man's gain is another's loss.

Topics: Loss

Life went a-maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When I was young!

Topics: Youth, Young

But oh! each visitation Suspends what nature gave me any my birth, My shaping spirit of Imagination.

Topics: Imagination, Spirit, Birth, Visitation

To be beloved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.

Topics: Love, Needs, Beloved

Women have their heads in their hearts. Man seems to have been destined for a superior being; as things are, I think women generally better creatures than men. They have weaker appetites and weaker intellects but much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever.

Topics: Strong, Women, Heart, Bad Heart

The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

Topics: Poetry, Attention, Definitions

Iambics march from short to long;-- With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng

Topics: Long, Poetry, March

Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.

Topics: Imagination, Intellectual, Genius

I love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.

Topics: Love Is, Superiority

Is duty a mere sport, or an employ! Life an entrusted talent or a toy!

Topics: Sports, Toys, Talent

The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty.

Topics: Poetry, Literature, Spirit

And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Topics: Pairs, Honey, Sole

Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, The glorious Sun uprist

Topics: Sun, Dawn, Red

Mr. Mum's Rudesheimer And the church of St. Geryon Are the two things alone That deserve to be known In the body-and-soul-stinking town of Cologne.

Topics: Two, Soul, Church, Cologne

I must lay down the law as I understand it, and as I read it in books of authority.

Topics: Book, Authority

Law grows, and though the principles of law remain unchanged, yet (and it is one of the advantages of the common law) their application is to be changed with the changing circumstances of the times. Some persons may call this retrogression, I call it progression of human opinion.

Topics: Opinion, Common, Progression, Common Law

I am sure from my experience of juries that, in a criminal case especially, they will obey the law as declared by the Judge; they will take the law from the Judge, whether they like it or do not like it, and apply it honestly to the facts before them.

Topics: Judging, Honestly, Jury

We must follow the old authorities and precedents in criminal matters.

Topics: Authority

It would not be correct to say that every moral obligation involves a legal duty; but every legal duty is founded on a moral obligation.

Topics: Moral, Duty, Obligation

A Court has no right to strain the law because it causes hardship.

Topics: Hardship

We are now Courts of equity, and must decide the thing according to all the rights.

Topics: Equity

As long as we have to administer the law we must do so according to the law as it is. We are not here to make the law.

Topics: Long

It is the duty of the Judge in criminal trials to take care that the verdict of the jury is not founded upon any evidence except that which the law allows.

Topics: Judging, Care, Duty, Verdict

We have to administer the law whether we like it or no.

Fellows of colleges in the universities are in one sense the recipients of alms, because they receive funds which originally were of an eleemosynary character.

Topics: Character, College, Fund

For compassion a human heart suffices, but for full and adequate sympathy, with joy, an angel's only.

Topics: Angel, Heart, Compassion

What! Did Sir W[alter] R[aleigh] believe that a male and female ounce (and, if so, why not two tigers and lions, etc?) would have produced, in a course of generations, a cat, or a cat a lion? This is Darwinizing with a vengeance.

Topics: Believe, Cat, Two

There is no slight danger from general ignorance; and the only choice which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government is either to fall by the people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, or with them, if they are kept enslaved and ignorant.

Topics: Fall, Ignorance, Government

Above all things I entreat you to preserve your faith in Christ. It is my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, my peace amid tumult. For all the evil I have committed, my gracious pardon; and for every effort, my exceeding great reward. I have found it to be so. I can smile with pity at the infidel whose vanity makes him dream that I should barter such a blessing for the few subtleties from the school of the cold-blooded sophists.

Topics: Dream, School, Blessing, Cold Blooded, Great Reward

Enlist the interests of stern Morality and religious Enthusiasm in the cause of Political Liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible.

Topics: Religious, Political, Liberty

To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for years has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent.

Topics: Children, Character, Years, Adulthood

The moving moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside.

Topics: Stars, Moving, Moon

O it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please.

Topics: Sunset, Heart, Sky, Clouds And Stars, Clouds Sky

A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of his head.

Topics: Eye, Men, Cyclops

For I often please myself with the fancy, now that I may have saved from oblivion the only striking passage in a whole volume, and now that I may have attracted notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten.

Topics: May, Fancy, Forgotten

The history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it.

Topics: Men, Years, Interesting, Nine Months

Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.

Topics: Pain, Real, Adversity, Real Pain

If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?.

Topics: Thinking, Men, Purpose, Thinking Man

This is the course of every evil deed, that, propagating still it brings forth evil.

Topics: Evil, Deeds, Stills

How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, and. prove it abundantly.

Topics: Country, Sex, Men, Clergy

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have not the time nor means to get more.

Topics: Country, Book, Mean

An orphan's curse would drag to hell, a spirit from on high; but oh! more horrible than that, is a curse in a dead man's eye!

Topics: Eye, Men, Spirit

A savage place! As holy and enchanted/As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted/By woman wailing for her Demon Lover!

Topics: Love, Moon, Age, Wailing

False doctrine does not necessarily make a man a heretic, but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical.

Topics: Heart, Men, Evil

There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon.

Topics: Wise, Men, Errors

Every human feeling is greater and larger than its exciting cause-a proof, I think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence.

Topics: Men, Thinking, Feelings

On the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, consisted in reality of three dramas, called together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in the course of one day.

Topics: Drama, Reality, Greek, Trilogies

A bitter and perplexed "What shall I do?" Is worse to man than worse necessity.

Topics: Men, Doubt, Bitter, Perplexed

The devil is not, indeed, perfectly humorous, but that is only because he is the extreme of all humor.

Topics: Humorous, Devil, Extremes

Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.

Topics: Blood, Support, Democracy

The curiosity of an honorable mind willingly rests there, where the love of truth does not urge it farther onward, and the love of its neighbor bids it stop; in other words, it willingly stops at the point where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward, and charity cries, Halt!

Topics: Curiosity, Mind, Charity

In what way, or by what manner of working, God changes a soul from evil to good, how He impregnates the barren rock--the priceless gems and gold--is to the human mind an impenetrable mystery, in all cases alike.

Topics: Rocks, Evil, Soul

In Koln, a town of monks and bones, And pavement fang'd with murderous stones, And rags and hags, and hideous wenches, I counted two-and-seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The River Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth whash the river Rhine.

Topics: Cities, Two, Rivers, Wenches, Cologne

Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.

Topics: Virtue, Easy, Persecution

Painting is the intermediate between a thought and a thing.

Topics: Painting

When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, this is madness.

Topics: Mistake, Men, Madness

Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action.

Topics: Love, Quality, Action, Amiable, Beloved Person

Happiness can be built only on virtue, and must of necessity have truth for its foundation.

Topics: Happiness, Foundation, Virtue

I do not wish you to act from these truths; no, still and always act from your feelings; only meditate often on these truths that sometime or other they may become your feelings.

Topics: Feelings, Wish, May

For I was reared in the great city, pent with cloisters dim,and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars.But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the cragsOf ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds,Which image in their bulk both lakes and shoresAnd mountain crags: so shall thou see and hearThe lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy GodUtters, who from eternity doth teachHimself in all, and al things in himselfGreat universal teacher! He shall moldThy spirit and by giving , make it ask.

Topics: Love, Teacher, Stars

In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends, and admiration fill up the interspace; but the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.

Topics: Philosophy, Ignorance, Parent

Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth, And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny, and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.

Topics: Life, Brain, Poison

There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch.

Topics: Time, Past, Class, Old Soul

That agony returns; And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.

Topics: Heart, Agony, Return

The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.

Topics: Beautiful, Lying, Men

Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, Yet she sailed softly too: Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze - On me alone it blew.

Topics: Ships, Breeze, Flew

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief, In word, or sigh, or tear.

Topics: Grief, Dark, Tears, Drowsy

Alone, Alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never saint took pity on My soul in agony

Topics: Sea, Agony, Soul

There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection.

Topics: Art, Reflection, People, Self Reflection

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.

source: - "Biographia Literaria". Book by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ch. XV, 1817.

Topics: Passion, Men, Profound, Great Poet, Poetry By Famous Poets

Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood.

Topics: Men, Childhood, Feelings

My eyes make pictures when they are shut.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1872). “Poetical Works of Samuel T. Coleridge”, p.134

Topics: Eye, Vision, Seeing, New Eyes, Eyes Looking

If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil . He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1851). “Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.288

Topics: Angel, Men, Devil

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self?

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1839). “On the Constitution of the Church and State According to the Idea of Each”, p.223

Topics: Self, Swallowing, Enthusiasm

All powerful souls have kindred with each other

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1854). “The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions”, p.544

Topics: Sympathy, Powerful, Soul, Kindred

Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2015). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria”, p.3699, e-artnow

Topics: Men, Thinking, Feelings, Deep Thinking, Deep Feeling

No man does anything from a single motive.

source: - "Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions; and Two Lay Sermons".

Topics: Inspirational, Motivation, Doe

Force yourself to reflect on what you read, paragraph by paragraph.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1853). “The Literary Remains”, p.316

Topics: Reading, Literacy, Force, Libraries Books And Reading

A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks.

Topics: Birthday, Men, Feelings, Age And Youth

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.84

Topics: Clever, Prose And Poetry, Prose Poetry, Best Poetry, Best Poet

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1854). “The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions”, p.481

Topics: Men, Race, People

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

source: - Samuel Coleridge, “Epigram”

Topics: Poetry, May, Fool

If a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend on it, he is sinking downward to be a devil.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1854). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions”, p.487

Topics: Angel, Men, Devil

The true key to the declension of the Roman empire which is not to be found in all Gibbon 's immense work may be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the table talk”

Topics: Character, Two, Keys, Roman Empire

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

Topics: Beautiful, Wish, Rewards, Great Reward

The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.

Topics: Sophistry, Conclusion, Premises

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

source: - Biographia Literaria ch. 1 (1817)

Topics: Mind, Atheism, Reform, Reformation, Weak Minds

Centres, or centre-pieces of wood, are put by builders under an arch of stone while it is in the process of construction till the keystone is put in. Just such is the use Satan makes of pleasures to construct evil habits upon; the pleasure lasts till the habit is fully formed; but that done the habit may stand eternal. The pleasures are sent for firewood, and the hell begins in this life.

source: - "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 295, 1895.

Topics: Evil, Arches, May, Firewood

In the deepest night of trouble and sorrow God gives us so much to be thankful for that we need never cease our singing. With all our wisdom and foresight we can take a lesson in gladness and gratitude from the happy bird that sings all night, as if the day were not long enough to tell its joy.

Topics: Gratitude, Night, Long, Gladness

Courage multiplies the chances of success by sometimes making opportunities, and always availing itself of them; and in this sense Fortune may be said to favor fools by those who, however prudent in their opinion, are deficient in valor and enterprise.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1854). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions”, p.476

Topics: Courage, Opportunity, Prudent

Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

Topics: Life, Motivational, Success, Orpheus

He prayeth best who loveth best.

source: - "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" l. 615 (1798)

Topics: Prayer, Dear God, Praying, Praying To God, Mariners

Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1836). “The ancient mariner. Christabel. Miscellaneous poems. Remorse. Zapolya”, p.148

Topics: Death, Nature, Swans

The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers.

source: - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1836). “The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.339

Topics: Firsts, Misery, Sincerity