Samuel Coleridge Quotes

"A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind."

"A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks."

"A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory."

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

"All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness."

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame."

"An orphan's curse would drag to hell, a spirit from on high; but oh! more horrible than that, is a curse in a dead man's eye!"

"And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming."

"General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree are to its leaves."

"He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope."

"How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!"

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

"I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance."

"I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order."

"If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake - Aye, what then?"

"In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure."

"My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, and not of the intellectual faculties."

"No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor."

"O pure of heart! Thou needest not ask of me what this strong music in the soul may be!"

"Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole."

"Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor."

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

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

"Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic."

"So for the mother's sake the child was dear, and dearer was the mother for the child."

"Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet."

"Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing."

"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."

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

"That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

"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."

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

"The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are - 1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and, 3. Hope to all."

"To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed."

"To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning."

"To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill."

"What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul."

"Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have not the time nor means to get more."

"Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain."

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