Samuel Taylor Coleridge idézet

oldal 5

„A képzelet az élő erő és minden emberi észlelés elsődleges hatóereje.”

„A saját szívünk, és nem mások véleménye alkotja az igazi becsületet.”

„Próza: a szavak a legjobb sorrendben. Költészet: a legjobb szavak a legjobb sorrendben.”

„Ami szívből jön, az szívbe megy.”

„A hallgatás nem mindig a bölcsesség jele.”

„A tanács olyan, mint a hó; minél lágyabban hull, annál tovább időzik rajta, és annál mélyebbre süllyed az elmében.”

„Minden gondolat, vágy s gyönyör, s ami e porhüvelyben ég,
szolgaként mind csak szítja a szerelem szent tüzét.”

“Manly energy … is the proper rendering [for αρετην], and not virtue, at least in the present and ordinary acceptation of the word.”

“Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former.”

“Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows,
Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.”

“Indignation at literary wrongs I leave to men born under happier stars. I cannot afford it.”

“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.”

“Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place
(Portentous-sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing an obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, "Where is it?"”

“I have known books written on Tolerance, the proper title of which would be — intolerant or intolerable books on tolerance. Should not a man who writes a book expressly to inculcate tolerance learn to treat with respect, or at least with indulgence, articles of faith which tens of thousands ten times told of his fellow-subjects or his fellow-creatures believe with all their souls, and upon the truth of which they rest their tranquillity in this world, and their hopes of salvation in the next, — those articles being at least maintainable against his arguments, and most certainly innocent in themselves?”

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

“I've lived and loved.”

“In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal.”

“Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge became habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glorysmitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton аs his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own Ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakspeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself.”

“The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths,—all these have vanished;
They live no longer in the faith of reason.”

“Schiller has the material sublime.”

“And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.”

“Carv'd with figures strange and sweet,
All made out of the carver's brain.”

“Saints will aid if men will call:
For the blue sky bends over all!”

“Summer has set in with his usual severity.”

“Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.”

“In the treatment of nervous cases, he is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.”

“Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!
Yea! every thing that is and will be free!
Bear witness for me, whereso'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored
The spirit of divinest Liberty.”

“Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost.”

“He told me that facts gave birth to, and were the absolute ground of, principles; to which I said, that unless he had a principle of selection, he would not have taken notice of those facts upon which he grounded his principle. You must have a lantern in your hand to give light, otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, for you cannot find them; and if you could, you could not arrange them.”

“Dryden's genius was of that sort which catches fire by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot by driving fast.”

“Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud —
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.”

“O lady! we receive but what we give
And in our life alone does Nature live.”

“The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every … minutest fiber.”

“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. that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.”

“That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”

“Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand,
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.”