“Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
Of friendship, love, and liberty,
Ere I was old!”
Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
“I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,-
His eyes are in his mind.”
Source: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.”
“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.”
“An undevout poet is an impossibility.”
Source: Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets
“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.”
“Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to meter. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.”
“All powerful souls have kindred with each other”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the greeks received from it had for its basis difference; & the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively was the curiosity & intense the delights at seeing the difficulty overcome.”
Source: 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
“How inimitably graceful children are in general-before they learn to dance.”
Source: Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“My eyes make pictures when they are shut.”
Source: Poetical Works of Samuel T. Coleridge
“I understood that you would take the Human Race in the concrete, have exploded the absurd notion of Pope's Essay on Man, [Erasmus] Darwin, and all the countless Believers-even (strange to say) among Xtians-of Man's having progressed from an Ouran Outang state-so contrary to all History, to all Religion, nay, to all Possibility-to have affirmed a Fall in some sense.”
Source: Lectures 1818-1819 on the history of philosophy
“All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair
The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing,
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“And in today already walks tomorrow.”
“I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language-religion-government-blood-identity in these makes men of one country.”
Source: Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Table Talk (2 v.)
“The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?”
“The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the vigor of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“Why is it that so many of us persist in thinking that autumn is a sad season? Nature has merely fallen asleep, and her dreams must be beautiful if we are to judge by her countenance.”
“Force yourself to reflect on what you read, paragraph by paragraph.”
Source: The Literary Remains
“And they three passed over the white sands, between the rocks, silent as the shadows.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“All nature seems at work.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility.”
“The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she.”
Source: Sibylline leaves: a collection of poems
“Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick.”
“Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.”
Source: The Friend: a series of essays ... First American, from the second London edition
“Oh Sleep! it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole, to Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, that slid into my soul.”
“The form of truth will bear exposure, as well as that of beauty herself.”
“We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love.”
“Her skin was white as leprosy.”
“Nature never deserts the wise and pure; no plot so narrow, be but nature there; no waste so vacant, but may well employ each faculty of sense, and keep the heart awake to love and beauty.”
Source: Letters, Conversations and Recollections
“Often do the spirits stride on before the event; and in today already walks tomorrow.”
“If a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend on it, he is sinking downward to be a devil.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole.”
“All men, even the most surly are influenced by affection.”
Source: Letters
“Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“Our own heart, and not other men's opinion, forms our true honor.”
Source: The works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: prose and verse
“No voice; but oh - the silence sank Like music on my heart.”
“The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.”
Source: Notes and Lectures Upon Shakespeare and Some of the Old Poets and Dramatists: With Other Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge
“People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.”
“Remorse weeps tears of blood.”
“That gracious thing, made up of tears and light.”
Source: Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Man Behind The Lyrics (Illustrated Edition): Autobiographical Works (Memoirs, Complete Letters, Literary Introspection, Thoughts and Notes on Poetry); Including Extensive Biographies and Studies on S. T. Coleridge
“Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”
Source: Letters, Conversations and Recollections
“A people are free in proportion as they form their own opinions.”
Source: The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Watchman, edited by L. Patton
“A Falsehood is, in one sense, a dead thing; but too often it moves about, galvanized by self-will, and pushes the living out of their seats.”
“All Science is necessarily prophetic, so truly so, that the power of prophecy is the test, the infallible criterion, by which any presumed Science is ascertained to be actually & verily science. The Ptolemaic Astronomy was barely able to prognosticate a lunar eclipse; with Kepler and Newton came Science and Prophecy.”
Source: Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Marginalia (5 v.)
“Mr. Lyell's system of geology is just half the truth, and no more. He affirms a great deal that is true, and he denies a great deal which is equally true; which is the general characteristic of all systems not embracing the whole truth.”
Source: Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Some persons have contended that mathematics ought to be taught by making the illustrations obvious to the senses. Nothing can be more absurd or injurious: it ought to be our never-ceasing effort to make people think, not feel.”
Source: Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton: A List of All the Ms. Emendations in Mr. Collier's Folio, 1632
“Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place, (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close, and hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, cries out, ''Where is it?''”
