Quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Until my ghastly tale is told, this heart within me burns.

The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer.

And life is thorny; and youth is vain

Experience informs us that the first defense of weak minds is to recriminate.

that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith

Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame; It is the reflex of our earthly frame, That takes its meaning from the nobler part, And but translates the language of the heart.

For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here! O Youth! for years so many and sweet, 'Tis known that Thou and I were one, I'll think it but a fond conceit-- It cannot be that Thou art gone!

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought.

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

They passed the hall, that echoes still, Pass as lightly as you will. The brands were flat, the brands were dying, Amid their own white ashes lying; But when the lady passed, there came A tongue of light, a fit of flame; And Christabel saw the lady's eye, And nothing else saw she thereby

And now this spell was snapt: once more I viewed the ocean green, And look'd far forth, yet little saw Of what had else been seen - Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turn'd round, walks on And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

And in Life's noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.

As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast. - (1772-1834)

An orphan's curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die.

Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright enemy.

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

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise.

Then all the charm Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape the other.

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.

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

O my brethren! I have told Most bitter truth, but without bitterness. Nor deem my zeal fractious or mistimed; For never can true courage dwell with them Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices.

Water, water everywhere Nor any drop to drink.

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.