Samuel Taylor Coleridge citations

Page 3

“Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation”

“What comes from the heart goes to the heart”

“The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.”

“Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.”

“The fair breeze blew,
The white foam flew,
And the forrow followed free.
We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.”

“Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.”

“Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.”

“The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.”

“Swans sing before they die— 't were no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.”

“He went like one that hath been stunn'd,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.”

“He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”

“The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It is awfully absurd to make a man invoke God's wrath upon himself, if he speaks false; it is, in my judgment, a sin to do so.”

“Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!”

“And the spring comes slowly up this way.”

“Clothing the palpable and familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn.”

“During the act of knowledge itself, the objective and subjective are so instantly united, that we cannot determine to which of the two the priority belongs.”

“Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to heaven conveyed,
And bade it blossom there.”

“Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.”

“Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.”

“If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.”

“The Eighth Commandment was not made for bards.”

“The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.”

“That passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense.”

“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 counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined, and several stinks.”

“Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!”

“Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, etc., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.”

“The true key to the declension of the Roman empire — which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work — may be stated in two words: — the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.”

“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.”