Notable Quotes
Browse quotes by subject | Browse quotes by author


Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE QUOTES


Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

English poet, critic, and philosopher

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Table Talk, July 23, 1827

The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant's shoulder to mount on.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Friend

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, Love

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, which will itself need reforming.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria

We ne'er can be
Made happy by compulsion.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Three Graves

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.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Christabel

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Work Without Hope

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Devil's Thoughts

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria

Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:--for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "Notes on Hamlet"

Laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of merriment.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "Notes on Hamlet"

From his brimstone bed at break of day
A walking the Devil is gone,
To visit his snug little farm the earth,
And see how his stock goes on.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Devil's Thoughts

Ah why refuse the blameless bliss?
Can danger lurk within a kiss?

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "To Sara"

If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, attributed, Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Architecture exhibits the greatest extent of the difference from nature which may exist in works of art. It involves all the powers of design, and is sculpture and painting inclusively. It shows the greatness of man, and should at the same time teach him humility.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Notes and Lectures Upon Shakespeare and Some of the Old Poets and Dramatists With Other Literary Remains

Bold with joy,
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops her blue-fringed lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, "Where is it?"

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "Fears in Solitude"

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquest.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "Biographia Literaria", The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Prose and Verse

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect of church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Aids to Reflection: Moral and Religious Aphorisms

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "Kubla Khan; or, a Vision in a Dream", The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "Frost at Midnight"

Swans sing before they die -- 'twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "On a Volunteer Singer", The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Literary Remains: Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit

If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Aids to Reflection

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, letter to Charles Lamb, May 1826

It sounds like stories from the land of spirits,
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Good, Great Man

Water cannot rise higher than its source, neither can human reason. Now, all reasoning respecting transcendent truths must have its source where the truths or ideas themselves originate.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, notes appended to the third edition of Southey's Life of Wesley

He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Three Graves

Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria

If dead, we cease to be; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being! If the breath
Be life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death;
O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "On the Denial of Immortality"

Be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an honorable augmentations to your arms, not constitute the coat or fill the escutcheon!

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria


Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poems - a collection of his poetry.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Bibliography - a bibliography, including list of critical resources.

SHARE QUOTES WITH FRIENDS!


Life Quotes

Love Quotes

Death Quotes

God Quotes

Wisdom Quotes

Hope Quotes

Success Quotes

Women Quotes

Happiness Quotes

Shakespeare Quotes