Coleridge's Notebooks Quotes

“Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deadly sick.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection

“The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn whether it could furnish him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, or ornaments, or playwiths, but who sought to know it for the gratification of knowing; while he that first sought to know in order to be was the first philosopher. I have read of two rivers passing through the same lake, yet all the way preserving their streams visibly distinct ... In a far finer distinction, yet in a subtler union, such, for the contemplative mind, are the streams of knowing and being. ... and up this lake the philosopher sails on the junction-line of the constituent streams, still pushing upward and sounding as he goes, towards the common fountain-head of both, the mysterious source whose being is knowledge, whose knowledge is being--the adorable I AM IN THAT I AM.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection

“La jeunesse contemple le Bonheur qui scintille loin devant elle – l'âge contemple le Bonheur qui scintille loin derrière lui. C'est le Bonheur de l'âge que de contempler a posteriori le Bonheur de la Jeunesse; et faute d'espérer, nous nous souvenons avec plaisir que nous avons espéré.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection