Quotes by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

"Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on ability
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"Advice is like snow; the softer it falls the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on advice
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"There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on age and aging
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"Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on enthusiasm
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"To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on experience
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"Friendship is a sheltering tree."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on friends and friendship
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"And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on friends and friendship   

"As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius -- the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on genius   

"Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on alcohol and alcoholism   

"Good and bad men are less than they seem."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on goodness
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"Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on gossip   

"The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are -- 1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and, 3. Hope to all."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on government   

"Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on greatness   

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on honor   

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on humor
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"The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on ideas   

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"Oh worse than everything, is kindness counterfeiting absent love."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on kindness   

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on language   

"To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on acting and actors   

"Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on animals   

"Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on aphorisms and epigrams   

"The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on architecture   

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"The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on marriage   

"He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on medicine   

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"What comes from the heart, goes to the heart."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on motivation
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"No one does anything from a single motive."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on motivation
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"I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language -- religion -- government -- blood -- identity in these makes men of one country."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on nations   

"Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on opinions   

"You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it -- low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion -- and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on parliament   

"Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on plagiarism   

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"I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; --poetry = the best words in the best order."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on poetry and poets   

"That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on poetry and poets   

"In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on politics
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"Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place, (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close, and hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, cries out, Where is it?"

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on atheism   

"And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on pride
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"What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on proverbs   

"Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have not the time nor means to get more."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on quotations   

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on reform   

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"A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy; -- nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded: for then it would be mere History."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on religion   

"Rights! There are no rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look at the history of the growth of our constitution, and you will see that our ancestors never upon any occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves; you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on right and rightness