Samuel Taylor Coleridge idézet

oldal 7

„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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Earth with her thousand voices praises 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?”

“Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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