Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Trending quotes (page 10)

“Moral obligation is to me so very strong a Stimulant, that in 9 cases out of ten it acts as a Narcotic. The Blow that should rouse, stuns me.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Letter to Henry Crabb Robinson (12 March 1811)
Letters

Strong

“Tranquillity! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ode to Tranquillity
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Family

“So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan (1797 or 1798)

Tree

“Never to see or describe any interesting appearance in nature, without connecting it by dim analogies with the moral world, proves faintness of Impression. Nature has her proper interest; & he will know what it is, who believes & feels, that every Thing has a life of it's own, & that we are all one Life.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Letter to William Sotheby (10 September 1802)
Letters

Life , World , Feeling , Nature

“I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Letter to Sir Humphry Davy (15 July 1800)
Letters

“Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from, — as pickpockets are observed commonly to walk with their hands in their breeches' pockets.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

4 January 1823
Table Talk (1821–1834)

“Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!
Utter forth ' God,' and fill the hills with praise!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni" (1802)

God

“My next shall be a more sober & chastised Epistle — but you see I was in the humour for metaphors — and to tell thee the Truth, I have so often serious reasons to quarrel with my Inclination, that I do not chuse to contradict it for Trifles.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Letter to Robert Southey (6 July 1794)
Letters

Truth

“Nought cared this Body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in't together.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

" Youth and Age http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Youth_and_Age.html", st. 1 (1823–1832)

Youth , Weather

“I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,—
His eyes are in his mind.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love

“With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"On Donne's Poetry" (c. 1818)

Love

“You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the market from 8 d. to 6 d. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after all.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

17 March 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Country

“In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Aids to Reflection (1873), Aphorism 1

Truth , Universe

“The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XVII

Parting

“Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

24 June 1827
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Courage , Nature , Thinking , Time

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. I

“Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he —
Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S. T. C!
That he, who many a year, with toil of breath,
Found death in life, may here find life in death.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Epitaph", written for himself (1833)

Life , Death

“Earth with her thousand voices praises God.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

God

“How many of our virtues originate in the fear of Death — & that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian Sensibility over the sorrows of our human Brethren and Sisteren, we are in fact, tho' perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own End — for who sincerely pities Sea-sickness, Toothache, or a fit of the Gout in a lusty Good-liver of 50?”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)
Letters

Death , Fear , Sincerity , Sea

“Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni" (1802)

Sea