“Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.”
“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: Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“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.”
“The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation are, — 1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and 3. Hope to all.”
“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.”
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
“The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.”
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
“Oh worse than everything, is kindness counterfeiting absent love.”
“Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face.”
Source: The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“'Tis a month before the month of May,
And the spring comes slowly up this way.”
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
“As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius - the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.”
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
“Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,Reality's dark dream!I turn from you, and listen to the wind,Which long has raved unnoticed.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.”
“A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy; - nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded: for then it would be mere History.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.”
“It is a flat'ning Thought, that the more we have seen, the less we have to say.”
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
“An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol.”
Source: Biographia Literaria, Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions
“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.”
Source: Coleridge's Aids to reflection: with the author's last corrections
“How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an autumnal day!”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“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.”
“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.”
Source: Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Two Volumes
“A spring of love gush'd from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware.”
Source: The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Complete in One Volume
“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.”
Source: The Friend: a series of essays ... First American, from the second London edition
“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.”
“Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.”
Source: On the Constitution of the Church and State
“About, about, in reel and rout the death fires danced at night.”
Source: Lyrical Ballads
“The once red leaf, the last of its clan, that dances as often as dance it can.”
Source: The Complete Plays of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Dramatic Works of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel; including The Piccolomini, The Death of Wallenstein, Remorse
“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.”
Source: Specimens of the table talk
“Men, I still think, ought to be weighed not counted.”
“The love of indolence is universal, or next to it.”
Source: Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Two Volumes
“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.”
Source: The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“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.”
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
“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.”
Source: Letters, Conversations and Recollections
“You do not believe, you only believe that you believe.”
“I have found words [in the Bible] for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and my feebleness.”
“He holds him with his glittering eye, And listens like a three years' child.”
“The nightmare Life-in-Death was she.”
“...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.”
Source: Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life
“A sight to dream of, not to tell!”
“Talk of the devil, and his horns appear.”
Source: Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions
“Why aren't more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren't within everybody's reach.”
“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.”
Source: Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Marginalia (5 v.)
“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.”
Source: The works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: prose and verse
“General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves.”
“An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches with spire steeples which point as with a silent finger to the sky and stars.”
Source: Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions
“Those who best know human nature will acknowledge most fully what a strength light hearted nonsense give to a hard working man”
“Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes.”
Source: Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“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.”
“To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.”
Source: Coleridge's Aids to reflection: with the author's last corrections
“The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions.”
“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.”
Source: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
