Taylor Coleridge Quotes & Sayings

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Religion is the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It alone will gentilize, if unmixed with cant. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Friendship is a sheltering tree." Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Nina Post

The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action - that the end will sanction any means. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius - the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise. Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where "I admire" is but a synonyme for "I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it ," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Stimulate the heart to love and the mind to be early accurate, and all other virtues will rise of their own accord, and all vices will be thrown out. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece of paper in their way, but took it up; for possibly, they say, the name of God may be on it. Though there was a little superstition in this, yet truly there is nothing but good religion in it, if we apply it to men. Trample not on any; there may be some work of grace there, that thou knowest not of. The name of God may be written upon that soul thou treadest on; it may be a soul that Christ thought so much of, as to give His precious blood for it; therefore despise it not. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Christianity is within a man, even as he is gifted with reason; it is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first remembered, tones of her blessed voice. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

To all new truths, or renovation of old truths, it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about-to-be renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive wreath. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases, which he does not choose to acknowledge openly with his own sign manual. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A great mind must be androgynous. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Clergymen who publish pious frauds in the interest of the church are the orthodox liars of God. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT Ere Sin could blight or Sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care: The opening Bud to Heaven convey'd, And bade it blossom there. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It would not be correct to say that every moral obligation involves a legal duty; but every legal duty is founded on a moral obligation. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Our own heart, and not other men's opinions, forms our true honor. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Boys and girls, And women, that would groan to see a child Pull off an insect's leg, all read of war, The best amusement for our morning meal. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I must reject fluids and ethers of all kinds, magnetical, electrical, and universal, to whatever quintessential thinness they may be treble distilled, and as it were super-substantiated. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I understood that you would take the Human Race in the concrete, have exploded the absurd notion of Pope's Essay on Man, [Erasmus] Darwin, and all the countless Believers-even (strange to say) among Xtians-of Man's having progressed from an Ouran Outang state-so contrary to all History, to all Religion, nay, to all Possibility-to have affirmed a Fall in some sense. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the vigor of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We must not be guilty of taking the law into our own hands, and converting it from what it really is to what we think it ought to be. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

To leave no interval between the sentence and the fulfillment of it doth beseem God only, the Immutable! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an autumnal day! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, & always in the Moult, & my whole Note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The curiosity of an honorable mind willingly rests there, where the love of truth does not urge it farther onward, and the love of its neighbor bids it stop; in other words, it willingly stops at the point where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward, and charity cries, Halt! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

To know, to esteem, to love,-and then to part,
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

All powerful souls have kindred with each other — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends, and admiration fill up the interspace; but the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and with such co-presence of the whole picture flash'd at once upon the eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. (Describing his poetic ideal, 1817) — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Painting is the intermediate between a thought and a thing. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Never pursue literature as a trade. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend on it, he is sinking downward to be a devil. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere,
Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known that Thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit
It cannot be that Thou art gone! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A maxim is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is merely speculative; a "principle" carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Centres, or centre-pieces of wood, are put by builders under an arch of stone while it is in the process of construction till the keystone is put in. Just such is the use Satan makes of pleasures to construct evil habits upon; the pleasure lasts till the habit is fully formed; but that done the habit may stand eternal. The pleasures are sent for firewood, and the hell begins in this life. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Every human feeling is greater and larger than its exciting cause-a proof, I think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by whom light as well as immortality was brought into the world) which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart
which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Every other science presupposes intelligence as already existing and complete: the philosopher contemplates it in its growth, and as it were represents its history to the mind from its birth to its maturity. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We should manage our thoughts as shepherds do their flowers in making a garland: first, select the choicest, and then dispose them in the most proper places, that every one may reflect a part of its color and brightness on the next. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel-dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Never can true courage dwell with them, Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He holds him with his glittering eye, And listens like a three years' child. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A spring of love gush'd from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, Reality's dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

How wonderfully beautiful is the delineation of the characters of the three patriarchs in Genesis! To be sure if ever man could, without impropriety, be called, or supposed to be, "the friend of God," Abraham was that man. We are not surprised that Abimelech and Ephron seem to reverence him so profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his conscious relation to God. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me any my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

infancy presents body and spirit in unity — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, and not of the intellectual faculties. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

An ear for music is very different from a taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could not sing an air to save my life; but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I ago's soliloquy
the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity
how awful it is! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Intellect really exists in its products; its kingdom is here. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Remorse weeps tears of blood. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A Court has no right to strain the law because it causes hardship. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets ... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of merriment. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Eighth Commandment was not made for bards. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts,
the first and the wisest of beasts, it may be, but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,
just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Persecution is a very easy form of virtue. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sonnet: To the River Otter

Dear native brook! wild streamlet of the West!
How many various-fated years have passed,
What happy and what mournful hours, since last
I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep impressed
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,
But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,
Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,
And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,
Gleamed through thy bright transparence! On my way,
Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled
Lone manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs:
Ah! that once more I were a careless child! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Remorse is as the heart in which it grows; If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy, It is the poison tree, that pierced to the inmost, Weeps only tears of poison. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He knows well the evening star, and once when he awoke, in a most distressful mood (some inward pain had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream), I hurried with him to our orchard plot, and he beheld the moon, and hushed at once. Suspends his sobs and laughs most silently. While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears, did glitter in the yellow moonbeam. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge