Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

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

The rules of prudence, in general, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. - Thou shalt not, is their characteristic formula; and it is an especial part of Christian prudence that it should be so. [Prudence]

The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate: or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.

The stars hang bright above, silent, as if they watched the sleeping earth.

The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are one, Security to possessors; two, facility to acquirers; and three, hope to all.

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.

The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous.

The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed. [Sincerity]

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them. [Wisdom]

Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating any opinions before it had come to years of discretion to choose for itself. - I showed him my garden, and I told him it was my botanical garden. - "How so?" said he; "it is covered with weeds." - "O," I replied, "that is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. - The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil toward roses and strawberries."
[Education]

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. [Error]

There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hour-glass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like the sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly-bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, and retaining only the refuse and dregs. And the fourth is like the slaves in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, retain only pure gems.
[Reading]

There are three classes into which all the women past seventy years of age I have ever known, were divided: that dear old soul; that old woman; that old witch. [Age]

There can be no end without means; and God furnishes no means that exempt us from the task and duty of joining our own best endeavors. The original stock, or wild olive tree of our natural powers, was not given us to be burnt or blighted, but to be grafted on. [Means]

There is in every human countenance, either a history or a prophecy, which must sadden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer.

There is no slight danger from general ignorance; and the only choice which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government is either to fall by the people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, or with them, if they are kept enslaved and ignorant. [Ignorance]

There is nothing insignificant - nothing. [Trifles]

There is one art of which every man should be a master - the art of reflection. - If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all? [Reflection]

This is the course of every evil deed, that, propagating still it brings forth evil.

This power...reveals itself in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.