Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.

A great mind must be androgynous.

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.

That gracious thing, made up of tears and light.

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.

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

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

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing, And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.

Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge.

Silence does not always mark wisdom.

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.

Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight.

Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.

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

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

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.

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

What comes from the heart goes to the heart

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.

Readers may be divided into four classes: 1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied. 2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. 3) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. 4) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also

An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches with spire steeples which point as with a silent finger to the sky and stars.

I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

Talk of the devil, and his horns appear.

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung.

No man does anything from a single motive.

Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if,when you awoke,you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?

In Koln, a town of monks and bones, And pavement fang'd with murderous stones, And rags and hags, and hideous wenches, I counted two-and-seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The River Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth whash the river Rhine.

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.

Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.

The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

And in today already walks tomorrow.

The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

He prayeth best who loveth best.

Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that every Thing has a Life of its own, and that we are all one Life.

The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.

The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers.

Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.

Her skin was white as leprosy.

He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

O it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please.