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
For I often please myself with the fancy, now that I may have saved from oblivion the only striking passage in a whole volume, and now that I may have attracted notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten.
A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of his head.
O it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please.
The moving moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside.
To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for years has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent.
False doctrine does not necessarily make a man a heretic, but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical.
Every human feeling is greater and larger than its exciting cause-a proof, I think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence.
I do not wish you to act from these truths; no, still and always act from your feelings; only meditate often on these truths that sometime or other they may become your feelings.
Happiness can be built only on virtue, and must of necessity have truth for its foundation.
Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action.
When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, this is madness.
Never can true courage dwell with them, Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices.
How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, and. prove it abundantly.
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.