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
Men of humor are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as Shakespeare.
I may not hope from outward forms to win / The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
I must reject fluids and ethers of all kinds, magnetical, electrical, and universal, to whatever quintessential thinness they may be treble distilled, and as it were super-substantiated.
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.
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.
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.
A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.
Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction.
A woman in a single state may be happy and may be miserable; but most happy, most miserable, these are epithets belonging to a wife.
Law grows, and though the principles of law remain unchanged, yet (and it is one of the advantages of the common law) their application is to be changed with the changing circumstances of the times. Some persons may call this retrogression, I call it progression of human opinion.
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.
We should manage our thoughts as shepherds do their flowers in making a garland: first, select the choicest, and then dispose them in the most proper places, that every one may reflect a part of its color and brightness on the next.
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.