Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridgewas an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases,...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 October 1772
I stood in unimaginable trance And agony that cannot be remembered.
I am never very forward in offering spiritual consolation to any one in distress or disease. I believe that such resources, to be of any service, must be self-evolved in the first instance. I am something of the Quaker's mind in this, and am inclined to wait for the spirit.
The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the Past; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity.
The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.
It is a gentle and affectionate thought, that in immeasurable height above us, at our first birth, the wreath of love was woven with sparkling stars for flowers.
Oh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them!
The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.
The history of all the world tells us that immoral means will ever intercept good ends.
Motives by excess reverse their very nature and instead of exciting, stun and stupefy the mind.
There is no such thing as a worthless book though there are some far worse than worthless; no book that is not worth preserving, if its existence may be tolerated; as there may be some men whom it may be proper to hang, but none should be suffered to starve.
The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty.
Is duty a mere sport, or an employ! Life an entrusted talent or a toy!
In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere.
One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe.