As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEUntil you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
More Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
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Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood.
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Silence does not always mark wisdom.
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As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius – the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.
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An undevout poet is an impossibility.
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How did the atheist get his idea of that God whom he denies?
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Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.
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There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon.
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The 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.
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Experience informs us that the first defence of weak minds is to recriminate.
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We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.
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We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,–just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all.
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Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
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Blest hour! It was a luxury–to be!
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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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Remorse 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.
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The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn whether it furnished him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, armaments, or playwiths but who sought to know it for the gratification of knowing.
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The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.
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I would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE.
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Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist. I repeat it. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist.
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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!
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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 man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.
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Be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an honorable augmentations to your arms, not constitute the coat or fill the escutcheon!
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A man’s as old as he’s feeling. A woman as old as she looks.
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To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.
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Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE