The true key to the declension of the Roman empire which is not to be found in all Gibbon ‘s immense work may be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGETo believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.
More Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
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I may not hope from outward forms to win / The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
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The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.
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Experience informs us that the first defence of weak minds is to recriminate.
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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.
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A sight to dream of, not to tell!
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Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.
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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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Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
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We are not surprised that Abimelech and Ephron seem to reverence him so profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his conscious relation to God.
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Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.
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I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.
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There is one art of which people should be masters – the art of reflection.
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Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.
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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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Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
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Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.
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How inimitably graceful children are in general-before they learn to dance.
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Summer has set in with its usual severity.
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He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.
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There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy which must sadden, or at least soften every reflecting observer.
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Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
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Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts,–the first and the wisest of beasts, it may be, but still true beasts.
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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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Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.
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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.
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Within today, tomorrow is already walking.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE