Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772 - 1834
1795 oil portrait by Peter Vandyke
Born: 21 October 1772, Ottery St. Mary, Devon, England, UK
Died: 25 July 1834, Highgate, England, UK
The youngest of thirteen children, Coleridge was hectored by older brothers, which led to his taking frequent sanctuary in the local library, reading the Arabian Nights at age six. In 1781 his father died and Coleridge was sent to Christ's Hospital, a charity school at Greyfriars, London. He went on to Jesus College, Cambridge in 1791, then entered the Royal Dragoons under an assumed name. After a failed attempt to setup a utopian commune called Pantisocracy, he married and briefly established a journal called The Watchman, featuring a publication schedule of every eight days because a tax on weekly newspapers was in effect. He soon met William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, the two poets published Lyrical Ballads in 1798 which included Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and is regarded as the starting point of the English romantic movement. From then until 1808 Coleridge spent most of his time on the Continent, studying in Germany and serving as Acting Public Secretary of Malta. He frequently suffered from depression, possibly bipolar syndrome, and took to laudanum, an infusion of opium in brandy, for relief. Kubla Khan was, by his own claim, inspired in an opium reverie. In 1817, alienated from his family, he moved into the home of a physician at Highgate and remained there for the rest of his life. He was often visited there by other writers including Carlyle and Emerson and finished Biographia Literaria, his major prose work there.
Biography from Wikipedia and Online Literature
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge quotes:
Quotes found : 120 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 8) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
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- The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 31 May 1830, Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge (1835) - 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. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks. permalink
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. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 23 July 1827, Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge (1835) - A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive. permalink
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 your imagination than to your memory. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 22 September 1830, Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge (1835) - Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into, the mind. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 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 & verily science. The Ptolemaic Astronomy was barely able to prognosticate a lunar eclipse; with Kepler and Newton came Science and Prophecy. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - On the Constitution of the Church and State (1830) - All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Biographia Literaria (1817) - All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - "Love" (1799) - An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Biographia Literaria (1817) - An orphan's curse would drag to Hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! More horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798, 1817) - And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - "The Devil's Thoughts" (1799) - Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants. permalink
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 20 August 1833, Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge (1835)
Quotes found : 120 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 8) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
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