Samuel Coleridge

The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,<br />Whether the summer clothe the general earth<br />With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing<br />Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch<br />Of mossy apple tree.

Boys and girls, And women, that would groan to see a child Pull off an insect's leg, all read of war, The best amusement for our morning meal.

I know the Bible is inspired because it finds me at greater depths of my being than any other book.

Tranquillity! thou better name Than all the family of Fame.

Never can true courage dwell with them, Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices.

There is nothing insignificant-nothing.

Painting is the intermediate between a thought and a thing.

When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, this is madness.

Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action.

Happiness can be built only on virtue, and must of necessity have truth for its foundation.

I do not wish you to act from these truths; no, still and always act from your feelings; only meditate often on these truths that sometime or other they may become your feelings.

Every human feeling is greater and larger than its exciting cause-a proof, I think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence.

False doctrine does not necessarily make a man a heretic, but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical.

Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word.

The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings.

The primary notion i hold to be the Living Power.

To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for years has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent.

The moving moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside.

O it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please.

A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of his head.

For I often please myself with the fancy, now that I may have saved from oblivion the only striking passage in a whole volume, and now that I may have attracted notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten.

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.

Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.

For mother's sake the child was dear, <br /> and dearer was the mother for the child.

Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.

Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood.

That agony returns; And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.

If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?.

This is the course of every evil deed, that, propagating still it brings forth evil.