1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
page 4

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism.

Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime. He was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction. Wikipedia  

✵ 21. October 1772 – 25. July 1834
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 220   quotes 18   likes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

“Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel

Part II
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Christabel

“Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

St. 1
"Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni" (1802)

Home

“A lady richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel

Part I
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Christabel

Beauty

“Experience informs us that the first defence of weak minds is to recriminate.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. II

“I lay too many Eggs in the hot Sands of this Wilderness, the World! with Ostrich Carelessness & Ostrich Oblivion. The greater part, I trust, are trod underfoot, & smashed; but yet no small number crawl forth into Life, some to furnish Feathers for the Caps of others, & still more to plume the Shafts in the Quivers of my Enemies, of them that lie in wait against my Soul.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Notebooks, September/early October 1802
Notebooks

Life , Lie , World , Soul

“Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

France, An Ode. v
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Sea

“Often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Death of Wallenstein, Act v, scene 1
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

9 May 1830
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Books

“Above all things I entreat you to preserve your faith in Christ. It is my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, my peace amid tumult. For all the evil I have committed, my gracious pardon; and for every effort, my exceeding great reward. I have found it to be so. I can smile with pity at the infidel whose vanity makes him dream that I should barter such a blessing for the few subtleties from the school of the cold-blooded sophists.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 235, and various other sources beginning no earlier than 1880; actually an elaboration and modification of a quote by D.W. Clark, The Mount of Blessing (1854), p. 56: "It shall be my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, and its promised rewards shall cheer me in all trials, and sustain me in all sufferings".
Misattributed

School , Peace , Faith , Smile

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Three Graves
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Mother's Day , For Mother

“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

“Blest hour! it was a luxury — to be!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

" Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Reflections_Retirement.html", l. 43 (1795)

“The anxiety to be admired is a loveless passion …, loud on the hustings, gay in the ball-room, mute and sullen at the family fireside.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Aids to Reflection, 1839 https://archive.org/stream/aidstoreflection06cole#page/142/mode/2up, p. 142.

Family , Passion

“I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, which I fear has gone on for an hour without any stop at all.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

29 June 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Fear

“Nature is a wary wily long-breathed old Witch, tough-lived as a Turtle and divisible as the Polyp, repullulative in a thousand Snips and Cuttings, integra et in toto! She is sure to get the better of Lady MIND in the long run, and to take her revenge too — transforms our To Day into a Canvass dead-colored to receive the dull featureless Portait of Yesterday.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)
Letters

Color , Revenge , Nature , Dead

“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 http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Love.html", st. 1 (1799)

Love , Passion

“The most general definition of beauty … Multeity in Unity.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On the Principles of Genial Criticism (1814)

Beauty

“The last speech, the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity — how awful!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On Iago soliloquy in Othello, in "Notes on Shakespeare" (c. 1812)

Motivation

“Our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XIV

Truth , Faith , Imagination , Nature

“Perhaps 't is pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel

Conclusion to Part II
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Christabel

“Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

30 August 1827
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Painting

“Seldom can philosophic genius be more usefully employed than in thus rescuing 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

“Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan (1797 or 1798)

Dance

“Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A Christmas Carol, viii
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Joy , Summer

“But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan (1797 or 1798)

Lovers

“Never, believe me,
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Visit of the Gods, (Imitated from Schiller)
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Appearance

“I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.
Letter to his brother (1791)
Letters

Truth , Mathematics

“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 their best order.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

12 July 1827
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Home

“It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to distinguish; but it is a still worse, that distinguishes in order to divide. In the former, we may contemplate the source of superstition and idolatry; in the latter of schism, heresy! and a seditious and sectarian spirit.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

'Aids to Reflection (1873), Aphorism 26