Christabel Coleridge Quotes

Coleridge perceived as no one else had done that lesbianism could be a source of the sublime. ~ Andrew Elfenbein

I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,-
His eyes are in his mind. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I think it was Coleridge who said everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. People who can't stand Aristotle's endless specificity of detail are natural lovers of Plato's soaring generalities. People who can't stand the eternal lofty idealism of Plato welcome the down-to-earth facts of Aristotle. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Coleridge, who when at Christ's Hospital was ambitious to be a shoemaker's apprentice, was right when he declared that shoemakers had given to the world a larger number of eminent men than any other handicraft. ~ George Smith

The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine? ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

As long as we have to administer the law we must do so according to the law as it is. We are not here to make the law. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Contempt is egotism in ill- humor. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling, Silent as though they watched the sleeping earth! ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The author of Biographia Literaria was already a ruined man. Sometimes, however, to be a "ruined man" is itself a vocation. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It is remarkable what fine hands men of genius write, even when they are as awkward in all other uses of the hand as a cow with a musket. ~ Sara Coleridge

In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, this is madness. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

For mother's sake the child was dear,
and dearer was the mother for the child. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A bard whom there were none to praise,
And very few to read. ~ Hartley Coleridge

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We ne'er can be Made happy by compulsion. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

How inimitably graceful children are in general-before they learn to dance. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Guilt is a timorous thing ere perpetration; despair alone makes guilty men be bold. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Romantic poets were the prototype ramblers, and I've often found myself following in their footsteps - although perhaps not all of their footsteps since a typical walk for Samuel T. Coleridge might last two days and cover 145km. ~ Arthur Smith

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. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The fastidious taste will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call slang, which not a few of our writers seem to have affected. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We have the same symptoms as tuberculosis, especially in the eyes of the Romantic Poets. Pale, tired, coughing up blood."
"That's romantic?"
I had to smile. "Romantic with a capital 'R.' You know, like Byron and Coleridge."
He gave a mock shudder. "Please, stop. I barely passed English Lit."
I snorted. "I didn't have that option. One of my aunts took Byron as a lover."
"Get out."
"Seriously. It makes Lucy insanely jealous."
"That girl is . . ."
"My best friend," I filled in sternly.
"I was only going to say she's unique. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There is nothing so uncertain and slippery as fact. ~ Sara Coleridge

Heart-chilling superstition! thou canst glaze even Pity's eye with her own frozen tear. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I shot the ALBATROSS. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He holds him with his glittering eye, And listens like a three years' child. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Indignation at literary wrongs I leave to men born under happier stars. I cannot afford it. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

God is everywhere! the God who framed
Mankind to be one, mighty family,
Himself our Father, and the world our home. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all. The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest Turned from the bridegroom's door. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Now, we are agreed, I and my destinies. The total world, Above, below, whate'er is seen or known, And all that men, and all that gods enact, Hopes, fears, imaginations, purposes; With joy, and pain, and every pulse that beats In the great body of the universe, I give to the eternal sisterhood, To make my peace withal! And cast this husk, This hated, mangled, and dishonour'd carcase Into the balance; so have I redeem'd My proper birthright, even the changeless mind, The imperishable essence uncontroll'd. ~ Hartley Coleridge

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

A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy; - nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded: for then it would be mere History. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Carved with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge