Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEPoetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEGuilt is a timorous thing ere perpetration; despair alone makes guilty men be bold.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThat gracious thing, made up of tears and light.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThe author of Biographia Literaria was already a ruined man. Sometimes, however, to be a “ruined man” is itself a vocation.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEOh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them!
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGESympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEUntil you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThe happiness of life is made up of minute fractions – the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEWithin today, tomorrow is already walking.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEI love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEEven to admire otherwise than on the whole and where “I admire” is but a synonyme for “I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it ,” is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEA single thought is that which it is from other thoughts as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGERemorse is as the heart in which it grows; If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy, It is the poison tree, that pierced to the inmost, Weeps only tears of poison.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEA bitter and perplexed “What shall I do?” Is worse to man than worse necessity.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEGood and bad men are each less so than they seem.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEDemocracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE