Samuel Taylor Coleridge > Quotes

“What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if,when you awoke,you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Silence does not always mark wisdom.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Readers may be divided into four classes:
1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“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.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“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.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Complete Poems

“Water, water, everywhere
And all the boards did shrink
Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“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.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Our own heart, and not other men's opinions, forms our true honor.”
― 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.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“No mind is thoroughly well-organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance. ”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“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.”
― 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

“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

“He Prayeth best, who loveth best; All things great and small; For the dear God who loveth us; He made and loveth all.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

“The fair breeze blew,
The white foam flew,
And the forrow followed free.
We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“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.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“A great mind must be androgynous.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“He went like one that hath been stunn'd,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“What if you slept?
And what if, in your sleep,
you dreamed?
And what if,
in your dream,
you went to heaven
and there
plucked a strange and beautiful flower?
And what if,
when you awoke,
you had the flower
in your hand?
Ah, what then?”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Complete Poems

“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

“Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moonshine.
[...]
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“Swans sing before they die - ‘twere no bad thing / Should certain people die before they sing!”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

“And to be wroth with one we love…Doth work like madness in the brain.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“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.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“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.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“He prayeth best who loveth best, all things both great and small. ”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“I shot the ALBATROSS.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Her lips were red, her locks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“If 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 Coleridge

“Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions; And Two Lay Sermons; I.-The Statesman's Manual. II.-Blesse

“A man’s desire is for the woman, but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

“Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

“If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke - Aye! and what then?”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anima Poetae from the Unpublished Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Willing Suspension of Disbelief”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“I look'd to Heav'n, and try'd to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came and made My heart as dry as dust.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“A sight to dream of, not to tell!”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“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.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge