Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke - Aye! and what then?

Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that every thing has a life of its own, and that we are all one life.

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

"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love,
(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he,
First named these notes a melancholy strain.

On Pilgrim's Progress: “I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors.

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

Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn.

Truth I pursued,as Fancy sketch'd the way,
And wiser men than I went worse astray.

There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

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

A great mind must be androgynous.

I lay too many Eggs in the hot Sands of this Wilderness, the World! with Ostrich Carelessness & Ostrich Oblivion. The greater part, I trust, are trod underfoot, & smashed; but yet no small number crawl forth into Life, some to furnish Feathers for the Caps of others, & still more to plume the Shafts in the Quivers of my Enemies, of them that lie in wait against my Soul.

The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.

O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed, While, and on whom, thou may'st — shine on! nor heed Whether the object by reflected light Return thy radiance or absorb it quite: And tho' thou notest from thy safe recess Old Friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air, Love them for what they are; nor love them less, Because to thee they are not what they were.

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