Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

A Gothic church is a petrified religion.

You do not believe, you only believe that you believe.

When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad.

It is a gentle and affectionate thought, that in immeasurable height above us, at our first birth, the wreath of love was woven with sparkling stars for flowers.

How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.

On the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, consisted in reality of three dramas, called together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in the course of one day.

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.

Why aren't more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren't within everybody's reach.

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

How well he fell asleepl Like some proud river, widening toward the sea; Calmly and grandly, silently and deep, Life joined eternity.

He saw a lawyer killing a viper on a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind of Cain and his brother Abel.

You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it - low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion - and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.

A savage place! As holy and enchanted/As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted/By woman wailing for her Demon Lover!

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place, (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close, and hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, cries out, ''Where is it?''

False doctrine does not necessarily make a man a heretic, but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical.

The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn whether it furnished him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, armaments, or playwiths but who sought to know it for the gratification of knowing.

I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language-religion-government-blood-identity in these makes men of one country.

The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

What! Did Sir W[alter] R[aleigh] believe that a male and female ounce (and, if so, why not two tigers and lions, etc?) would have produced, in a course of generations, a cat, or a cat a lion? This is Darwinizing with a vengeance.

As long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny, there will be found reviewers to calumniate.

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

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

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.

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.

That only can with propriety be styled refinement which, by strengthening the intellect, purifies the manners.

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

Often do the spirits stride on before the event; and in today already walks tomorrow.

Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist. I repeat it. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist.

Enlist the interests of stern Morality and religious Enthusiasm in the cause of Political Liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible.

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.

The paternal and filial duties discipline the heart, and prepare it for the love of all mankind. The intensity of private attachment encourages, not prevents, universal benevolence.

The most general definition of beauty ... Multeity in Unity.

Memory, bosom-spring of joy.

A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune.

Fear gives sudden instincts of skill.

The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. "Thou shalt not" is their characteristic formula.

And in today already walks tomorrow.

A woman in a single state may be happy and may be miserable; but most happy, most miserable, these are epithets belonging to a wife.

He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.

Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.

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.

If you wish to assured of the truth of Christianity, try it. Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of thy belief.

Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.

Alone, Alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never saint took pity on My soul in agony

Our own heart, and not other men's opinion, forms our true honor.

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

Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.

Women have their heads in their hearts. Man seems to have been destined for a superior being; as things are, I think women generally better creatures than men. They have weaker appetites and weaker intellects but much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever.