I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEI have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGETo believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGENothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGENothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self?
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGENature 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.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThose who best know human nature will acknowledge most fully what a strength light hearted nonsense give to a hard working man
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEMan 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.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEMilton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEMen 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.
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 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.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEDay after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEThe direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEAs 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.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEWe 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.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGEAnd in today already walks tomorrow.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE