Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

English - Poet October 21, 1772 - July 25, 1834

Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake - Aye, what then?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are one, Security to possessors; two, facility to acquirers; and three, hope to all.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge