Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.

It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue, Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.

Like some poor nigh-related guest, That may not rudely be dismist; Yet hath outstayed his welcome while, And tells the jest without the smile.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.

My next shall be a more sober & chastised Epistle — but you see I was in the humour for metaphors — and to tell thee the Truth, I have so often serious reasons to quarrel with my Inclination, that I do not chuse to contradict it for Trifles.

So for the mother’s sake the child was dear, And dearer was the mother for the child.

’Tis a month before the month of May, And the spring comes slowly up this way.

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flower Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? 'God!' let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, 'God!' 'God!' sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, 'God!'

Alas; they had been friends in youth
but whispering tongues can poison truth

Lingering he raised his latch at eve, Though tired in heart and limb: He loved no other place, and yet Home was no home to him.

The mariners all ‘gan work the ropes,
where they were wont to do:
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools -
We were a ghastly crew.

Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book.

The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every ... minutest fiber.