Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

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

The spring comes slowly up this way.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Seasons

Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Sleep

Truths of all others the most awful and interesting are too often considered as so true that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Truth

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

Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade, death came with friendly care; the opening but to heaven conveyed, and bade it blossom there.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

No one does anything from a single motive.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Motivation, Motivational

For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Eating

Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Gossip

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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Government

If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable opinion of himself.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Mind

Silence does not always mark wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Silence

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

To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Acting, Actors

Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Bible, Style

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

Swans sing before they die—t’were no bad thing did certain persons die before they sing.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Singing

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

As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Idleness, One liners

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, which will itself need reforming.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Reform, Correction, Change

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

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Wonder, Love, Abundance

I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language—religion—government—blood—identity in these makes men of one country.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Nationalism, Nation, Nations, Nationality

The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Marriage

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

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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Water

How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Dance, Dancing

The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to the worth and value of its object.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Knowledge

What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Motivational, Motivation

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