Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeAll thoughts, all passions, all delights, whatever stirs this mortal frame, all are but ministers of love, and feed his sacred flame.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeOnly the wise possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSympathy 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 ColeridgeThe faults of great authors are generally excellences carried to an excess.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeA 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.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeFriendship is a sheltering tree.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeCommon sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeAnd the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeThe love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeThe primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeThe most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeAdvice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into, the mind.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeIt was a miracle of rare device, a sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeIt is that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeWisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeOur own heart, and not other men's opinion, forms our true honor.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeNo mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeWorks of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeOh sleep! It is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeWhat is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeIf you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeA 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.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeThere is no such thing as a worthless book though there are some far worse than worthless; no book that is not worth preserving, if its existence may be tolerated; as there may be some men whom it may be proper to hang, but none should be suffered to starve.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeAlas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
