Quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

O happy living things! no tongueTheir beauty might declare:A spring of love gushed from my heart,And I blessed them unaware.

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power… imagination.

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close,And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,Cries out, "Where is it?"

A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.

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

A sadder and a wiser manHe rose the morrow morn.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots.

Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.

Beneath this sodA poet lies, or that which once seemed he—Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S.T.C.!That he, who many a year, with toil of breath,Found death in life, may here find life in death.

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

It were a vain endeavor,Though I should gaze foreverOn that green light that lingers in the west:I may not hope from outward forms to winThe passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud—We in ourselves rejoice!And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,All melodies the echoes of that voice,All colors a suffusion from that light.

Her gentle limbs did she undress,And lay down in her loveliness.

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.

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

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation.

The two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination.

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

Her lips were red, her looks were free,Her locks were yellow as gold:Her skin was white as leprosy,The nightmare Life-in-Death was she,Who thicks man's blood with cold.