Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a distinguished English philosopher, literary critic and a poet known for his Lyrical Ballads. The pioneer of modern ‘Romantic’ literature, he’s known for his innovative verses and influential thinking. Actively preaching during the French Revolution, this recalcitrant pamphleteer reawakened progressive ideas of middle class men and inspired a new generation of writers like Emerson to develop outstanding meditative, speculative and oracular pieces. He was a constant companion of William Wordsworth, a founder of Romanticism and a well-known member of ‘Lake Poets’. His exemplary works include 8 poems like Kubla Khan, The Rime of Ancient Mariner, critical analysis of Shakespeare’s work and Biographia Literaria, the renowned prose. Coleridge, who coined a series of terminology like the ‘suspension of disbelief’ was the mastermind behind amalgamating English oration with German idealist philosophy. He inspired American transcendentalism during his younger years. Adulthood was harsh to Samuel, who lost his creative mind to bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety, ultimately developing rheumatic fever. It finally got him addicted to opium and he died at 61. His long poems and editorials are compiled under a collective series ‘The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’ available in 16 volumes. He inspired many by his thoughts and beliefs. We have excerpted his quotes from some of his writings, lectures and life. Here is a collection of some profound quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A great mind must be androgynous.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.