Quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Every other science presupposes intelligence as already existing and complete: the philosopher contemplates it in its growth, and as it were represents its history to the mind from its birth to its maturity.

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,That dances as often as dance it can,Hanging so light, and hanging so high,On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

Where true Love burns Desire is Loves pure flame;It is the reflex of our earthly frame,That takes its meaning from the nobler part,And but translates the language of the heart.

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awake, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?

On Pilgrims Progress: “I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors.

The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself.

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,Which finds no natural outlet or relief,In word, or sigh, or tear.

The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer.

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke - Aye! and what then?

A man’s desire is for the woman, but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.- (1772-1834)

Men, I still think, ought to be weighed, not counted. Their worth ought to be the final estimate of their value.

There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hourglass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like the sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, and retaining only the refuse and dregs. And the fourth is like the slaves in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, retain only pure gems.

Our own heart, and not other mens opinions, forms our true honor.

In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.

He was, as every truly great poet has ever been, a good man; but finding it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in religion or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to the living spirit and light within him, and avenged himself on the world by enriching it with this record of his own transcendental ideal.

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legsUpon the slimy sea.

Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the deserving.

Advice is like snow the softer it falls the longer it dwells upon and the deeper it sinks into the mind.

To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship which illumine only the track it has passed.