Samuel T Coleridge - Collected Quotes

"Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure." (Samuel T Coleridge, "Definitions of Poetry", 1811)

"The imagination […] that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors." (Samuel T Coleridge, "The Statesman's Manual", 1816)

"An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol." (Samuel T Coleridge," Biographia Literaria", 1817)

"For language is the armory of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests." (Samuel T Coleridge," Biographia Literaria", 1817)

"It seems to be like taking the pieces of a dissected map out of its box. We first look at one part, and then at another, then join and dove-tail them; and when the successive acts of attention have been completed, there is a retrogressive effort of mind to behold it as a whole. The poet should paint to the imagination, not to the fancy; and I know no happier case to exemplify the distinction between these two faculties." (Samuel T Coleridge," Biographia Literaria", 1817)

"The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself." (Samuel T Coleridge," Biographia Literaria", 1817)

"Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth." (Samuel T Coleridge," Biographia Literaria", 1817)

"In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission." (Samuel T Coleridge, "Aids to Reflection", 1825)

"The largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms." (Samuel T Coleridge, "Aids to Reflection", 1825)

"All Science is necessarily prophetic, so truly so, that the power of prophecy is the test, the infallible criterion, by which any presumed Science is ascertained to be actually and verily science." (Samuel T Coleridge, "On the Constitution of the Church and State", 1830)

"Facts […] are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate deduction from all the facts which are truly material." (Samuel T Coleridge, "The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge", 1831)

"A maxim is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is merely speculative; a ‘principle’ carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective." (Samuel T Coleridge, "The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge", 1831)

"A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it." (Samuel T Coleridge, "Letters", 1836)

"One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe." (Samuel T Coleridge, "The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge", 1836)

"To all new truths, or renovation of old truths, it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about-to-be renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive wreath." (Samuel T Coleridge, "The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge", 1836)

"When the whole and the parts are seen at once, as mutually producing and explaining each other, as unity in multeity, there results shapeliness." (Samuel T Coleridge, "Letters", 1836)

"It is the essence of a scientific definition to be causative, not by introduction of imaginary somewhats, natural or supernatural, under the name of causes, but by announcing the law of action in the particular case, in subordination to the common law of which all the phenomena are modifications or results." (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Hints Towards the Formation of a More Comprehensive Theory of Life, The Nature of Life", 1847)

"We study the complex in the simple; and only from the intuition of the lower can we safely proceed to the intellection of the higher degrees. The only danger lies in the leaping from low to high, with the neglect of the intervening gradations." (Samuel T Coleridge, "Physiology of Life", 1848)

"Some persons have contended that mathematics ought to be taught by making the illustrations obvious to the senses. Nothing can be more absurd or injurious: it ought to be our never-ceasing effort to make people think, not feel." (Samuel T Coleridge, "Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton", 1856)

"Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom." (Samuel T Coleridge)

"Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation." (Samuel T Coleridge)