Quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

Readers may be divided into four classes: I. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied. II. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. III. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. IV. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

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

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

He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.

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.

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

Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.

Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

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.

A great mind must be androgynous.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

What comes from the heart goes to the heart

The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.

Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

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

Little is taught by contest or dispute, everything by sympathy and love.

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.

Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation

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

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief, In word, or sigh, or tear.

Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company.

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.