Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher. He was a major poet of the Romantic Movement. He is also noted for his prose works on literature, religion, and the organization of society.
Born in Ottery St. Mary, England, Coleridge was the youngest of ten children. He studied at Cambridge, but he struggled there and dropped out to join the cavalry. He did poorly as a soldier, and his brothers got him a discharge on the grounds of insanity.
Coleridge’s first major poem, “The Eolian Harp,” from Poems on Various Subjects (1796,) announced his unique contribution to the growth of English romanticism.
Coleridge is renowned for his productive friendship with William Wordsworth. They both liked to compose their poetry while walking, so they took long walks together in England’s Lake District throughout their first year of friendship. Coleridge wrote his most famous poems: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan,” “Christabel,” and “Frost at Midnight.” This annus mirabilis (July 1797 to July 1798) culminated in their joint publication of Lyrical Ballads 1798. It marked the start of English Romanticism.
Within a few years, Coleridge’s life began to crumble. He became addicted to opium—he lost his creativity and ruined his friendship with Wordsworth. He spent most of the last 18 years of his life in comparative peace and steady literary activity. He wrote a great book of literary criticism called Biographia Literaria (1817,) and Lay Sermons (1817,) Aids to Reflection (1825,) and The Constitution of Church and State (1829.) However, he failed to complete most of his ambitious projects, including voluminous works on geography, the history of English prose, a translation of Goethe’s Faust, a musical about Adam and Eve, a history of logic, a history of German metaphysics, a study of witchcraft, and an encyclopedia.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Sex
The religion of the Jews is, indeed, a light; but it is as the light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat, and illumines nothing but itself
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Judaism
Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Style
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.—It is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes.—It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Enthusiasm
It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort; the habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel reading. Like idle morning visitors, the brisk and breathless periods hurry in and hurry off in quick and profitless succession—each, indeed, for the moment of its stay preventing the pain of vacancy, while it indulges the love of sloth; but, altogether, they leave the mistress of the house—the soul—flat and exhausted, incapable of attending to her own concerns, and unfitted for the conversation of more rational guests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Proverbs, Proverbial Wisdom
If a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downward 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.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Angels, Progress, Religion, Integrity
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Style, Bible
Centers, or wooden frames are put under the arches of a bridge, to remain no longer than till the latter are consolidated, and then are thrown away or cast into the fire. Even so, sinful pleasures are the devil’s scaffolding to build a habit upon; and once formed and fixed, the pleasures are sent for firewood, and hell begins in this life.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Pleasure
A picture is an intermediate something between a thought and a thing.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Painting
What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Motivation, Motivational
The curiosity of an honorable mind willingly rests where the love of truth does not urge it further 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.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Curiosity
Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Opinions, Opinion
My eyes make pictures, when they are shut.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Eyes
Stimulate the heart of love and the mind to be early accurate, and all other virtues will rise of their own accord, and all vices will be thrown out.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Love
Never yet did there exist a full faith in the divine word which did not expand the intellect while it purified the heart; which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Faith
He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Christianity, Christians
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.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Truth
A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Poetry, Nature
No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Humor
There is a religion in all deep love, but the love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Mothers Day
A rogue is a roundabout fool.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Earth
Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Poetry
The three great ends for a statesman are, security to possessors, facility to acquirers, and liberty and hope to the people.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
There is in every human countenance, either a history or a prophecy, which must sadden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Face
The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to the worth and value of its object.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Knowledge
There is one art of which every man should be a master—the art of reflection.—If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Reflection
Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The first idea of method is a progressive transition from one step to another in any course.—If in the right course, it will be the true method; if in the wrong, we cannot hope to progress.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Our own heart, and not other men’s opinion, forms our true honor.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To write or talk concerning any subject, without having previously taken the pains to understand it, is a breach of the duty which we owe to ourselves, though it may be no offence against the laws of the land. The privilege of talking and even publishing nonsense is necessary in a free state; but the more sparingly we make use of it the better.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
There can be no end without means; and God furnishes no means that exempt us from the task and duty of joining our own best endeavors. The original stock, or wild olive tree of our natural powers, was not given us to be burnt or blighted, but to be grafted on.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Tolerance
Christianity proves itself, as the sun is seen by its own light.—Its evidence is involved in its excellence.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Christianity
A maxim is a conclusion from observation of matters of fact, and is merely speculative; a principle carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Animals
All men, even the most surly, are influenced by affection.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Love
The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases which he does not choose to subscribe openly with his own sign-manual.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Chance
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