I may not hope from outward forms to win / The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEI may not hope from outward forms to win / The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEIf a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend on it, he is sinking downward to be a devil.
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 COLERIDGEUntil you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGESilence does not always mark wisdom.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEIt is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThis world has angels all too few, and heaven is overflowing.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEIt [is] very unfair to influence a child’s mind by inculcating any opinions before it [has] come to years of discretion to choose for itself.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThe age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThe first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThat willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThe faults of great authors are generally excellences carried to an excess.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEClergymen who publish pious frauds in the interest of the church are the orthodox liars of God.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEOh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them!
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.
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