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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
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To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed.
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
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A man's desire is for the woman, but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree are to its leaves.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Good and bad men are less than they seem.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks.
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
He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.
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
The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
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
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
I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.
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 man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.
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
Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poetry: the best words in the best order.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge