Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Mind

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

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

“The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous.”

“No mind is thoroughly well-organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.”

“I am dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope — those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love, — for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream.”

“I am never very forward in offering spiritual consolation to any one in distress or disease. I believe that such resources, to be of any service, must be self-evolved in the first instance. I am something of the Quaker's mind in this, and am inclined to wait for the spirit.”

“He saw a lawyer killing a viper
On a dunghill hard, by his own stable
And the devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of
Cain and his brother, Abel.”

“As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should, in all ages, be the privilege of a few? The most obvious reason is this: The wonder takes place before the period of reflection, and (with the great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of directing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress which the wonder of ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiarity.”

“The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.”

“Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful mind.”

“But metre itself implies a passion, i. e. a state of excitement, both in the Poet's mind, & is expected in that of the Reader.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”