Quotes from book
Biographia Literaria

Biographia Literaria, or in full Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, is an autobiography in discourse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which he published in 1817, in two volumes of twenty-three chapters.

“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.”
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XV

“Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.”
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XII

“An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol.”
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. IX

“Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth.”
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. IX

“The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space.”
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XIII

“Indignation at literary wrongs I leave to men born under happier stars. I cannot afford it.”
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. II

“Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful mind.”
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. IV

“That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XIV

“Experience informs us that the first defence of weak minds is to recriminate.”
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. II

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XIV.
Context: The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination.