Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should, in all ages, be the privilege of a few? The most obvious reason is this: The wonder takes place before the period of reflection, and (with the great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of directing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress which the wonder of ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiarity.

The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all.

Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the deserving.

Tho' veiled in spires of myrtle wreath,
Love is a sword that cuts its sheath,
And thro' the clefts, itself has made,
We spy the flashes of the Blade!

But thro' the clefts, itself has made,
We likewise see Love's flashing blade,
By rust consumed or snapt in twain:
And only Hilt and Stump remain.

- Song

And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you, How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.

But metre itself implies a passion, i.e. a state of excitement, both in the Poet's mind, & is expected in that of the Reader.

In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

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.

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison!

I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks!

But alas! the exceptions prove the rule. For who will dare to force his way out of the crowd,—not of the mere vulgar,—but of the vain and banded aristocracy of intellect, and presume to join the almost supernatural beings that stand by themselves aloof?

Aloof with hermit-eye I scan The present works of present man — A wild and dreamlike trade of blood and guile, Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!