I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; – poetry = the best words in the best order.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEIt is a gentle and affectionate thought, that in immeasurable height above us, at our first birth, the wreath of love was woven with sparkling stars for flowers.
More Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
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The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.
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I love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.
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I never knew a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other.
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I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.
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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.
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Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self?
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We may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite.
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No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
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That gracious thing, made up of tears and light.
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The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity.
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Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:–for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty.
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Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.
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Guilt is a timorous thing ere perpetration; despair alone makes guilty men be bold.
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To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.
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Even 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 COLERIDGE






