Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher. He was a major poet of the Romantic Movement. He is also noted for his prose works on literature, religion, and the organization of society.
Born in Ottery St. Mary, England, Coleridge was the youngest of ten children. He studied at Cambridge, but he struggled there and dropped out to join the cavalry. He did poorly as a soldier, and his brothers got him a discharge on the grounds of insanity.
Coleridge’s first major poem, “The Eolian Harp,” from Poems on Various Subjects (1796,) announced his unique contribution to the growth of English romanticism.
Coleridge is renowned for his productive friendship with William Wordsworth. They both liked to compose their poetry while walking, so they took long walks together in England’s Lake District throughout their first year of friendship. Coleridge wrote his most famous poems: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan,” “Christabel,” and “Frost at Midnight.” This annus mirabilis (July 1797 to July 1798) culminated in their joint publication of Lyrical Ballads 1798. It marked the start of English Romanticism.
Within a few years, Coleridge’s life began to crumble. He became addicted to opium—he lost his creativity and ruined his friendship with Wordsworth. He spent most of the last 18 years of his life in comparative peace and steady literary activity. He wrote a great book of literary criticism called Biographia Literaria (1817,) and Lay Sermons (1817,) Aids to Reflection (1825,) and The Constitution of Church and State (1829.) However, he failed to complete most of his ambitious projects, including voluminous works on geography, the history of English prose, a translation of Goethe’s Faust, a musical about Adam and Eve, a history of logic, a history of German metaphysics, a study of witchcraft, and an encyclopedia.
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There is one art of which every man should be a master — the art of reflection. — If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Reflection
Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it ends; and admiration fills up the interspace. — But the first is the wonder of ignorance; the last is the parent of adoration.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Philosophy
Common-sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Wisdom
Cleverness is a sort of genius for instrumentality. It is the brain of the hand. In literature, cleverness is more frequently accompanied by wit, genius, and sense, than by humor.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Genius
Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Genius
Often do the spirits of great events stride on before the events, and in today already walks tomorrow.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Past and Present, Events, Future
A bitter and perplexed, “What shall I do?” is worse to man than worst necessity.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Doubt, Uncertainty
The three great ends for a statesman are, security to possessors, facility to acquirers, and liberty and hope to the people.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm. — It is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. — It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Enthusiasm
Good and bad men are less than they seem.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Goodness
The history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Life
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Genius
Our own heart, and not other men’s opinion, forms our true honor.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Alcohol
All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Selfishness, Sympathy
Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Poetry
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Genius, Talent, Ability
If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! — But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to the worth and value of its object.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Knowledge
There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hour-glass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like the sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly-bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, and retaining only the refuse and dregs. And the fourth is like the slaves in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, retain only pure gems.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Reading
There is in every human countenance, either a history or a prophecy, which must sadden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Love, Sympathy
Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I have known what the enjoyments and advantages of this life are, and what are the more refined pleasures which learning and intellectual power can bestow; and with all the experience that more than three-score years can give, I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to you, that health is a great blessing; competence obtained by honorable industry is a great blessing; and a great blessing it is, to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Topics: Religion, Christian
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