Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves.

Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand,
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

They parted — ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining — They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between; — But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.

Each matin bell, the Baron saith,
Knells us back to a world of death.

Unchanged within, to see all changed without, Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt. Yet why at others' Wanings should'st thou fret? Then only might'st thou feel a just regret, Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light In selfish forethought of neglect and slight.

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

Around thee and above, Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity!

Friends should be weighed, not told; who boasts to have won a multitude of friends has never had one.

The frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind.

An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.

A man’s desire is for the woman, but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

Metaphisics is a word that you, my dear Sir! are no great friend to / but yet you will agree, that a great Poet must be, implicitè if not explicitè, a profound Metaphysician. He may not have it in logical coherence, in his Brain & Tongue; but he must have it by Tact / for all sounds, & all forms of human nature he must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent Desart, the eye of a North American Indian tracing the footsteps of an Enemy upon the Leaves that strew the Forest — ; the Touch of a Blind Man feeling the face of a darling Child.

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.

Her gentle limbs did she undress, And lay down in her loveliness.