Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
The stars hang bright above, silent, as if they watched the sleeping earth.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Stars
The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathises with their just feelings.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Argument
Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Sleep
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: Nature, Poetry
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.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Religion
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.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Genius
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Friendship, Friends
It is not enough that we swallow truth: we must feed upon it, as insects do on the leaf, till the whole heart be colored by its qualities, and show its food in every fibre.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Truth
I know the Bible is inspired, because it finds me at greater depths of my being than any other book.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Bible, Inspiration
False doctrine does not necessarily make the man a heretic, but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Poetry
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
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
Cleverness is a sort of genius for instrumentality. It is the brain of the hand. In literature, cleverness is more frequently accompanied by wit, genius, and sense, than by humor.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Genius
Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Wit, Humor
To carry the feelings of childhood into the Dowers of manhood, 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.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Genius
I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children; and what an inhuman world, without the aged.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Children
Our own heart, and not other men’s opinion, forms our true honor.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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 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
Christianity, rightly understood, is identical with the highest philosophy; the essential doctrines of Christianity are necessary and eternal truths of reason.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Christianity
As there is much beast and some devil in man, so there is some angel and some God in him.—The beast and devil may be conquered, but in this life are never destroyed.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Humanity, Character, Evils
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.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Genius
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
Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Poetry
Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Ignorance
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
Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Facts, Instincts
Milton has carefully marked, in his Satan, the intense selfishness which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Selfishness
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- William Wordsworth English Poet
- Percy Bysshe Shelley English Poet
- John Dryden English Poet
- William Ernest Henley British Poet, Critic
- William Blake English Poet
- Bernard Mandeville British Writer
- Philip Larkin English Poet
- Christina Rossetti English Poet
- Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
- William Cowper English Anglican Poet
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