661 Quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty.

It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite.

Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.

Religion is the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It alone will gentilize, if unmixed with cant.

Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating the truth.

He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.

Truths ... are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.

Is duty a mere sport, or an employ! Life an entrusted talent or a toy!