Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes


"The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Architecture, Infinity)

"The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Marriage, Blind, Man, Woman)

"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
(Related: Desire, Man, Woman)

"The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Love, Mother, Father, Heart, Light)

"The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Happiness, Life, Kiss, Compliment, Smile)

"The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Genius, People, Being, Literature, Wit)

"That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Faith)

"To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Experience, Men)

"Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Imagination, Talent, Genius, Action, Being, Lying, Reason, Understanding)

"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
(Related: Poetry, Habit, Reward, Wishing)

"Talk of the devil, and his horns appear."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Devil, Talk)

"To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Genius, Man, School)

"Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Ignorance, Understanding, Writer)

"What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Soul, Body, Brevity, Wit)

"Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Imagination, Language)

"Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Swans)

"Poetry: the best words in the best order."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Order, Words)

"Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Being)

"People of humor are always in some degree people of genius."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Humor, Genius, People)

"Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Men, Heart, Honor, Opinions)

"Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Love, Sympathy, Friendship, Passion)

"Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: People, Historians, Poets)

"And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Love, Friends, Old)

"Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Future, Language, Mind, Past, Weapons)

"Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Greatness, Goodness)

"He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Hope)

"He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Truth, Christianity, Church, End, Will)

"How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Vices)

"I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Thought, Children, Melancholy, World)

"I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Poetry, Order, Poets, Prose, Words)

"Good and bad men are less than they seem."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Men)

"Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Bible, Being, Study, Style, Will, Writer)

"I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Intolerance, Support)

"Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Friendship, Love)

"No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Time, Being, Man)

"No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Humor, Mind, Sense)

"No one does anything from a single motive."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Motive)

"Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Heart, Strength, Goodness, Man, Mind)

"Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Enthusiasm, Nothing)

"In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Politics, Fear, Failure)

"A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Mother)

"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 awake - Aye, what then?"
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Soul, Dream, Paradise, Man)

"A 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
(Related: Desire, Man, Woman)

"General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree are to its leaves."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Facts, Principles)

"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
(Related: Imagination, Nature, Trust, Act, Borrowing, Memory)

"Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Advice, Mind, Snow)

"Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Truth, Friends, Poison, Youth)

"All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Sympathy, Virtue, Selfishness)

"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
(Related: Love, Thoughts)

"A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Death, Destruction, Man, Mankind, May, Nation, Will)

"Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Men, Knowledge)

"A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Feeling, Man, Old, Woman)

"Friendship is a sheltering tree."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Friendship)

"Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Excess, Reform, Will)

"Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Wisdom, Common sense, World)

"Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Life, Christianity, Living, Philosophy, Theory)

"Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Animals, Man)

"As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Dreams, Life, Man)