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Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes (1772-1834)
Philosopher, Poet
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About Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) was an English poet, critic and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets.
Best Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Samuel Taylor Coleridge quotes.
“I've lived and loved.”
“Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!”
“Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn.”
“Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!”
“Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.”
“O! I do love thee, meek Simplicity!”
“The Eighth Commandment was not made for bards.”
“The doing evil to avoid an evil
Cannot be good.”
Cannot be good.”
“Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”
“A lady so richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly!”
Beautiful exceedingly!”
“A mother is a mother still;
The holiest thing alive.”
The holiest thing alive.”
“Never, believe me,
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone.”
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone.”
“Tranquillity! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame!”
Than all the family of Fame!”
“The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind.”
Unhelped by any wind.”
“I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony that cannot be remembered.”
And agony that cannot be remembered.”
“Her gentle limbs did she undress,
And lay down in her loveliness.”
And lay down in her loveliness.”
“Each matin bell, the Baron saith,
Knells us back to a world of death.”
Knells us back to a world of death.”
“What is an Epigram? a dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.”
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.”
“The most general definition of beauty ... Multeity in Unity.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Samuel Taylor Coleridge quotes by topic.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Love 13 quotes
“In many ways doth the full heart reveal The presence of the love it would conceal.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Poetry about love 11 quotes
“In many ways doth the full heart reveal The presence of the love it would conceal.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Poetry 5 quotes
“An undevout poet is an impossibility.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Prayer 4 quotes
“He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Dreams 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Dreams →Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Life 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Life →Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Friendship 2 quotes
“Friendship is a sheltering tree.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Solitude 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Solitude →Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Stars 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Stars →Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Nightingales 2 quotes
“"Most musical, most melancholy" bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Belief 2 quotes
“Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of that belief.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Thought 2 quotes
“Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm.”
What Samuel Taylor Coleridge Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Samuel Taylor Coleridge shared regarding contemporaries.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Women 4 quotes
“Her gentle limbs did she undress And lay down in her loveliness.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on William Shakespeare 3 quotes
“He was not only a great poet, but a great philosopher.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Maiden 2 quotes
“A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Giordano Bruno 2 quotes
“I propose to give an account of the life of Giordano Bruno... who was burnt under pretence of atheism, at Rome, in the year 1600 and of his works which are perhaps the scarcest books ever printed... The most industrious historians of speculative philosophy have not been able to procure more than a few of his works... out of eleven, the titles of which are preserved to us I have had an opportunity of perusing six.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Mothers
“A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Petrarch
“Petrarch was the final blossom and perfection of the Troubadours.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Virgil
“If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Statius
“I think Statius a truer poet than Lucan, though he is very extravagant sometimes.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Jesus
“Lovely was the death Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power, He on the thought-benighted Skeptic beamed Manifest Godhead.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on John Donne
“To read Dryden, Pope, &c., you need only count syllables; but to read Donne you must measure time, and discover the time of each word by the sense of passion.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
“There is a nimiety — a too-muchness — in all Germans. It is the national fault. Lessing had the best notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination of German words renders blank verse in that language almost impracticable.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Edmund Burke
“Edmund Burke possessed and had sedulously sharpened that eye, which sees all things, actions, and events, in relation to the laws that determine their existence and circumscribe their possibility. He referred habitually to principles. He was a scientific statesman; and therefore a seer.”
Quotes About Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Samuel Taylor Coleridge from others.
Lord Byron on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But, like a hawk encumber'd with his hood, Explaining metaphysics to the nation – I wish he would explain his Explanation.”
Thomas Carlyle on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“He is a kind, good soul, full of religion and affection and poetry and animal magnetism. His cardinal sin is that he wants will. He has no resolution. He shrinks from pain or labour in any of its shapes. His very atti- tude bespeaks this. He never straightens his knee-joints. He stoops with his fat, ill-shapen shoulders, and in walking he does not tread, but shovel and slide. My father would call it "skluffing." He is also always busied to keep, by strong and frequent inhalations, the water of his mouth from over-flowing, and his eyes have a look of anxious impotence. He would do with all his heart, but he knows he dares not. The conversation of the man is much as I anticipated — a forest of thoughts, some true, many false, more part dubious, all of them ingenious in some degree, often in a high degree. But there is no method in his talk; he wanders like a man sailing among many currents, whithersoever his lazy mind directs him; and, what is more unpleasant, he preaches, or rather soliloquises. He cannot speak, he can only tal-k (so he names it). Hence I found him unprofitable, even tedious; but we parted very good friends, I promising to go back and see him some evening a promise which I fully intend to keep. I sent him a copy of Meister, about which we had some friendly talk. I reckon him a man of great and useless genius: a strange, not at all a great man.”
Alfred Cobban on Samuel Taylor Coleridge 3 quotes
“Less active a politician, but a deeper philosopher, Coleridge continually reminds us of Burke. If the mantle of the author of the Reflections descended on anyone it was on the former young Pantisocrat. The political philosophy of Coleridge is that of Burke modified and developed on all sides, and, we may claim, not altogether losing in value in the process.”
Robertson Davies on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Coleridge was perhaps the most celebrated of all drinkers of laudanum, and splendid studies have been written of its influence on his Muse. Nobody seems to have paid attention to its influence on his bowels, for laudanum was a rare constipator. How much of The Ancient Mariner was the result of intestinal stasis?”
T. S. Eliot on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Ian Gilmour on Samuel Taylor Coleridge 2 quotes
“Coleridge...became indeed the greatest of Burke's followers. Like Burke, he was intensely religious. Religion, he believed, was always "the centre of gravity in a realm, to which all other things must and will accommodate themselves". Though a metaphysician, he thought metaphysics had no place in politics; and he was as hostile as Burke to abstract political systems allegedly based on pure reason... Hence for Coleridge Jacobinism was a monstrous hybrid, "made up in part of despotism and in part of abstract reason misapplied to objects that belong entirely to experience and the understanding". Jacobinism pandered to the brute passions of the mob in order to erect a society and government based on abstract reason instead of on established institutions and experience. England, in contrast, had the good fortune to possess social institutions that had "formed themselves out of our proper needs and interests..."”
William Hazlitt on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“He was the first poet I ever knew. His genius at that time had angelic wings, and fed on manna. He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort; but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him from off his feet.”
Hugh Kingsmill on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The genius of Coleridge is like a sunken treasure ship, and Coleridge a diver too timid and lazy to bring its riches to the surface.”
Charles Lamb on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Arch angel a little damaged ... Coleridge is absent but 4 miles, & the neighbourhood of such a man is as exciting as the presence of 50 ordinary Persons.”
John Stuart Mill on Samuel Taylor Coleridge 3 quotes
“The name of Coleridge is one of the few English names of our time which are likely to be oftener pronounced, and to be symbolical of more important things, in proportion as the inward workings of the age manifest themselves more and more in outward facts.”
John Henry Newman on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“While history in prose and verse was thus made the instrument of Church feelings and opinions, a philosophical basis for the same was under formation in England by a very original thinker, who, while he indulged a liberty of speculation which no Christian can tolerate, and advocated conclusions which were often heathen rather than Christian, yet after all instilled a higher philosophy into inquiring minds, than they had hitherto been accustomed to accept. In this way he made trial of his age, and found it respond to him, and succeeded in interesting its genius in the cause of Catholic truth. It has indeed been only since the death of Coleridge that these results of his writings have fully shown themselves; but they were very evident when they were once seen, and discovered the tendencies which had been working in his mind from the first.”
Alicia Ostriker on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Most of the great critics of English poetry have also been poets: Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Shelley, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, to name a few.”
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Above all things I entreat you to preserve your faith in Christ. It is my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, my peace amid tumult. For all the evil I have committed, my gracious pardon; and for every effort, my exceeding great reward. I have found it to be so. I can smile with pity at the infidel whose vanity makes him dream that I should barter such a blessing for the few subtleties from the school of the cold-blooded sophists.”
About Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) was an English poet, critic and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets.