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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
William Wordsworth English Poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley English Poet
John Dryden English Poet
William Ernest Henley English Poet
William Blake English Poet
Bernard Mandeville Anglo-Dutch Philosopher, Satirist
Philip Larkin English Poet
William Cowper English Anglican Poet
Christina Rossetti English Poet
Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet