Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.

My eyes make pictures, when they are shut.

And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversly fram'd, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of All?

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!'

Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils.

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.

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, Reality's dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind.

Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation.

But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love, The green fields below him, the blue sky above, That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he— 'I love my Love, and my Love loves me!'

And aye, beside her stalks her amarous knight!
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,
His hindward charms glean an unearthly white,
Ah! thus thro' broken clouds at night's high Noon
Peeps in fair fragments forth the full-orb'd harvest-moon!

Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams!

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.

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!

A lady so richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly!

It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to distinguish; but it is a still worse that distinguishes in order to divide.