Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

Men, I still think, ought to be weighed, not counted. Their worth ought to be the final estimate of their value.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hourglass; 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.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He was, as every truly great poet has ever been, a good man; but finding it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in religion or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to the living spirit and light within him, and avenged himself on the world by enriching it with this record of his own transcendental ideal.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legsUpon the slimy sea.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the deserving.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Fear gives sudden instincts of skill.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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 their best order.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

No man does anything from a single motive.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Works 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 Coleridge

Love is flower like Friendship is like a sheltering tree.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge