text:
Talk:Victor Hugo

"No army can stop an idea whose time has come."
This is cited lots of ways by different people; what's the original wording in French?

"One resists the invasion of armies..."
"On resiste a l'invasion des armees; on ne resiste pas a l'invasion des idees," "One resists the invasion of armies, but not the invasion of ideas." Histoire d'un Crime (History of a CrIme) (1877) This is one of the most splendid and most diversely translated of all of Hugo's statements… one could probably gather at least a dozen common variants of it in english.

telegram w/ publisher
I've heard of the following quote (in Eats Shoots and Leaves, in particular) but can't find a source on line.:

In a letter to his publisher regarding the sales of Les Miserables: ? In response, indicating good sales: !

 * Small note -- if true, the story is that these were telegrams, not letters. Which explains the brevity since the cost of the telegram was calculated by the number of characters.

 * Here's WP's source: Walsh, William S: Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, page 600. Philadelphia: J.B. Lipincott Co, 1892. --Mermer (talk) 07:39, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

like a kiss through a veil
"A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil" Attributed to Hugo on the 'net, but did he say or write it, and if so, what's the French?

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
from Volume 1 - Book Heighth - Chapter 1 of Les Misérables (check there : http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/135).

He who opens a school door closes a prison
Widely attributed to Hugo but I cannot find textual evidence. If it was said but not written, then who kept up the oral tradition until someone attributed it to Hugo? Do we at least know the first time it was attributed to Hugo?

There is a brief discussion on this quote on another page (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk_archive/Humanities/2006_August_10#Victor_Hugo_Quote ), but since it's one of the more employed quotations (at least here in California during our current education vs. prison budget priority crisis) I think it's a good investment for Wikiquote to search for some sort of legitimate attribution. If not Hugo, does someone else deserve credit, or was it hearsay until someone decided to write it down as an alleged Hugo quote and it's stayed that way ever since? 173.164.183.149 09:07, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

 * Possibly a rephrasing of "Destroy the cave Ignorance, and you destroy the mole Crime." -- Les Miserables (Part III: Marius, Book VII: Patron Minette, Chapter 2: The lowest depth). If it is, it's unclear who the first was to make the paraphrase, though the meaning is close. --Gavroche42 (talk) 16:40, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

A very similar quote ("Open schools and prisons will be closed") is attributed to Concepción Arenal (link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepción_Arenal), a Spanish lawyer, feminist activist who worked extensively on education and prisons, and who lived roughly at the same time than Victor Hugo. -- 212.128.155.60 09:06, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

"To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law."
"To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God."

I see this quote on a lot of websites. Does anybody have a source for it or know if it is fake?

"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."
Widely seen on inspirational quote sites, probably fake.

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right
Can anyone verify this quote? Some claim the original French is "quand la dictature est un fait, la révolution devient un droit." Yel D'ohan (talk) 17:06, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Victor Hugo


text:
Wikiquote:Quotation marks

Use of quotation marks
In 2003, the Wikiquote community adopted a policy requiring quotation marks around every quotation. In August, 2005, this policy was reversed. Some pages have not yet been updated to the new standard, so editors should feel free to remove quotation marks where appropriate (that is, when the quotation marks were added by a Wikiquote editor and are not a part of the original text). New entries should not add extra quotation marks beyond those present in the original source.

Vote
This vote took place on Wikiquote talk:Templates/Literary works and ended on August 26, 2005.

Currently, the official standard in literary work pages is to use quote marks. Since often, the literary works have complicated quote mark structure on themselves, and since wikiquote tries to strive for quotes which are as accurate as possible, this often leads to problems. In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, I've already been bold and not used quote marks. Should literary works standard deprecate using quote marks? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 22:35, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Vote closes: 19 Aug 2005 12:00 (UTC)
 * Vote closes: 26 Aug 2005 12:00 (UTC): extended vote for another week, as not enough people took interest.
 * Vote closed: I've removed the quote marks from the template. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:36, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Support quote marks contribute nothing ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 22:35, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: I have given the proposal about a week. Extend it to two weeks if you feel it is necessary. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 22:35, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: because our main content is quotation - we can visibly separate quotes and (our) remarks with indent, so I suppose there would be no problem, however I would like to consider it carefully for a while. --Aphaia 18:00, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Support STRONGLY. I have always been against the use of the "inch-marks" on the pages as both superfluous and ugly, and ceased to use them unless a vast majority of quotes already on a page were like that. The only quote marks we should use are those within the quotes themselves, or if using quotes within comments that we make. I hadn't noticed this new vote going on 'til now. ~ Kalki 10:51, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Support- I dislike quote marks. Besides this is wikiquote not wikiquotequote. Sveden 16:33, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Support for several reasons:
 * WQ, as a publishing entity, follows its own manual of style, which (like any other publication) will change such punctuation if necessary to suit its style, as long as it doesn't change the meaning of the quote;
 * Like most print quotation dictionaries, we should leave out these superfluous marks, as we have similar styling options not available to Internet-Stone-Age text quote sources;
 * Eliminating these marks gives us more flexibility with internal quote marks;
 * We also neatly avoid much of the British vs. American quote-style problems that come up, despite MoS guidelines, by eliminating perhaps 95% of the quotation marks that would be used.
 * ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:49, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Support for all the reasons mentioned above. We should do our best to represent the original source as faithfully as possible, which should be understood to include punctuation.  121a0012 00:00, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

es:Wikiquote:Propuestas sobre uso de comillas

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikiquote:Quotation marks


text:
Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading lyric poet in Latin.

Quotes

 * Cras ingens iterabimus aequor
 * Tomorrow we will be back on the vast ocean.
 * The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations: The Illiterati's Guide to Latin Maxims, Mottoes, Proverbs and Sayings

Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

 * Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat? ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima.
 * What is to prevent one from telling truth as he laughs, even as teachers sometimes give cookies to children to coax them into learning their A B C?
 * Book I, satire i, line 24 (translation by H. Fairclough)

 * What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?
 * Book I, satire i, line 48

 * Bona pars hominum est decepta cupidine falso 'nil satis est', inquit, 'quia tanti quantum habeas sis.'
 * People are enticed by a desire which continually cheats them. ‘Nothing is enough,’ they say, ‘for you’re only worth what you have.’
 * Book I, satire i, lines 61-62, as translated by N. Rudd

 * Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturus.
 * Often must you turn your pencil to erase, if you hope to write something worth a second reading.
 * Book I, satire i, lines 72-3, (transl. Rushton Fairclough, 1926)

 * Let’s put a limit to the scramble for money. ... Having got what you wanted, you ought to begin to bring that struggle to an end.
 * Book I, satire i, lines 92-94, as translated by N. Rudd

 * Inde fit ut raro, qui se vixisse beatum dicat et exacto contentus tempore vita cedat uti conviva satur, reperire queamus.
 * We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.
 * Book I, satire i, line 117

 * Non satis est puris versum perscribere verbis.
 * 'Tis not sufficient to combine Well-chosen words in a well-ordered line.
 * Book I, satire iv, line 54 (translated by John Conington)

 * Atqui si vitiis mediocribus ac mea paucis mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos, si neque avaritiam neque sordes nec mala lustra obiciet vere quisquam mihi, purus et insons, ut me collaudem, si et vivo carus amicis... at hoc nunc laus illi debetur et a me gratia maior. nil me paeniteat sanum patris huius, eoque non, ut magna dolo factum negat esse suo pars, quod non ingenuos habeat clarosque parentis, sic me defendam.
 * If my character is flawed by a few minor faults, but is otherwise decent and moral, if you can point out only a few scattered blemishes on an otherwise immaculate surface, if no one can accuse me of greed, or of prurience, or of profligacy, if I live a virtuous life, free of defilement (pardon, for a moment, my self-praise), and if I am to my friends a good friend, my father deserves all the credit... As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude and praise. I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedman's son.
 * Book I, satire vi, lines 65–92

 * Nil sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus.
 * Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work. / Life has given nothing to mortals without great labor.
 * Book I, satire ix, line 59

 * in pace, ut sapiens, aptarit idonea bello
 * In peace, as a wise man, he should make suitable preparation for war.
 * Book II, satire ii, line 111

 * Adclinis falsis animus meliora recusat.
 * The mind enamored with deceptive things, declines things better.
 * Book II, satire ii, line 6

 * Quocirca vivite fortes, fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus
 * So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.
 * Book II, Satire II, Line 135-136 (trans. E. C. Wickham)

 * Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit : unus utrique Error, sed variis illudit partibus.
 * This to the right, that to the left hand strays, And all are wrong, but wrong in different ways.
 * Book II, satire iii, line 50 (trans. Conington)

 * Heu, Fortuna, quis est crudelior in nos Te deus? Ut semper gaudes illudere rebus Humanis!
 * O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers, Why make such game of this poor life of ours?
 * Book II, satire viii, line 61 (trans. Conington)

 * Sed convivatoris uti ducis ingenium res Adversae nudare solent, celare secundae.
 * A host is like a general: calamities often reveal his genius.
 * Book II, satire viii, lines 73–74

 * Dum licet, in rebus jucundis vive beatus; Vive memor quam sis aevi brevis.
 * Then take, good sir, your pleasure while you may; With life so short 'twere wrong to lose a day.
 * Book II, satire viii, line 96 (trans. Conington)

Odes (c. 23 BC and 13 BC)
Prudens Oceano dissociabili Terras, si tamen impiae Non tangenda rates transiliunt vada.'' Divide the waters from the land, If daring ships and men profane, Invade th' inviolable main.
 * ''Nequiquam deus abscidit
 * In vain did Nature's wife command
 * Book I, ode iii, line 21 (trans. by John Dryden)

 * Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.
 * Life's short span forbids us to enter on far reaching hopes.
 * Book I, ode iv, line 15

 * Nil desperandum...
 * Never despair...
 * Book I, ode vii, line 27

 * Nunc vino pellite curas.
 * Now drown care in wine.
 * Book I, ode vii, line 32

 * Permitte divis cetera.
 * Leave all else to the gods.
 * Book I, ode ix, line 9

 * Dum loquimur, fugerit invida Aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
 * As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.
 * Book I, ode xi, line 7
 * John Conington's translation:
 * In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebbed away, Seize the present, trust tomorrow e'en as little as you may.

 * O matre pulchra filia pulchrior
 * O fairer daughter of a fair mother!
 * Book I, ode xvi, line 1

 * Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus.
 * Now is the time for drinking, now the time to dance footloose upon the earth.
 * Book I, ode xxxvii, line 1

 * Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem.
 * In adversity, remember to keep an even mind.
 * Book II, ode iii, line 1

 * Auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit, tutus caret obsoleti sordibus tecti, caret invidenda sobrius aula.
 * Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.
 * Book II, ode x, line 5

labuntur anni nec pietas moram rugis et instanti senectae adferet indomitaeque morti.'' Our years, nor piety one hour Can win from wrinkles and decay, And Death's indomitable power.
 * ''Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
 * Ah, Postumus! they fleet away,
 * Book II, ode xiv, line 1 (trans. John Conington)

 * Virginibus puerisque canto.
 * I sing for maidens and boys.
 * Book III, ode i, line 4

 * Aequa lege Necessitas Sortitur insignes et imos; Omne capax movet urna nomen.
 * Death takes the mean man with the proud; The fatal urn has room for all.
 * Book III, ode i, line 14 (trans. John Conington)

 * Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
 * It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country.
 * Book III, ode ii, line 13

 * Iustum et tenacem propositi virum non civium ardor prava iubentium, non vultus instantis tyranni mente quatit solida.
 * The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.
 * Book III, ode iii, line 1

 * Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae.
 * If the world should break and fall on him, it would strike him fearless.
 * Book III, ode iii, line 7

 * Vis consili expers mole ruit sua.
 * Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

 * Come, Mercury, by whose minstrel spell Amphion raised the Theban stones, Come, with thy seven sweet strings, my shell, Thy "diverse tones," Nor vocal once nor pleasant, now To rich man's board and temple dear: Put forth thy power, till Lyde bow Her stubborn ear.
 * Mercui, Nam Te
 * Book III, ode xi

 * Crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam, Maiorumque fames.
 * As money grows, care follows it and the hunger for more.
 * Book III, ode xvi, line 17

 * Magnas inter opes inops.
 * A pauper in the midst of wealth.
 * Book III, ode xvi, line 28.
 * Conington's translation: "'Mid vast possessions poor."

componere aequus.'' And put it out of Fortune's power.
 * ''Quod adest memento
 * Enjoy the present smiling hour,
 * Book III, ode xxix, line 32 (as translated by John Dryden)

Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call to day his own: He who, secure within, can say, To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.
 * Ille potens sui laetusque deget, cui licet in diem dixisse "vixi: cras vel atra nube polum pater occupato vel sole puro."
 * He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, "I have lived: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine."
 * Book III, ode xxix, line 41
 * John Dryden's paraphrase:

 * Exegi monumentum aere perennius
 * I have made a monument more lasting than bronze.
 * Book III, ode xxx, line 1

 * Pulvis et umbra sumus.
 * We are but dust and shadow.
 * Book IV, ode vii, line 16

 * Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona.
 * Brave men were living before Agamemnon.
 * Book IV, ode ix, line 25

Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

 * Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum.
 * My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.
 * Book I, epistle i, line 11

 * Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri, quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.
 * I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.
 * Book I, epistle i, line 14

 * Virtus est vitium fugere et sapientia prima stultitia caruisse.
 * To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.
 * Book I, epistle i, line 41

 * Nos numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati.
 * We are but numbers, born to consume resources.
 * Book I, epistle ii, line 27

 * Nam cur quae laedunt oculum festinas demere; si quid est animum, differs curandi tempus in annum?
 * For why do you hasten to remove things that hurt your eyes, but if anything gnaws your mind, defer the time of curing it from year to year?
 * Book I, epistle ii, lines 37–39; translation by C. Smart

 * Dimidium facti qui coepit habet; sapere aude; incipe!
 * He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!
 * Book I, epistle ii, lines 40–41

 * Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam, Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis.
 * He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
 * Book I, epistle ii, lines 41–42

 * Semper avarus eget.
 * The covetous man is ever in want.
 * Book I, epistle ii, line 56

 * Ira furor brevis est: animum rege: qui nisi paret imperat.
 * Anger is a momentary madness so control your passion or it will control you.
 * Book I, epistle ii, line 62

 * Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras, Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum: Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora.
 * Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be, And think each day that dawns the last you'll see; For so the hour that greets you unforeseen Will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.
 * Book I, epistle iv, line 12 (translated by John Conington)

 * Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum. grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur hora.
 * Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.
 * Book I, epistle iv, line 13–14

 * Me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises, cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege porcum.
 * As for me, when you want a good laugh, you will find me in fine state... fat and sleek, a true hog of Epicurus' herd.
 * Book I, epistle iv, lines 15–16

 * Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.
 * You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.
 * Book I, epistle x, line 24

 * Caelum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.
 * Sky, not spirit, do they change, those who cross the sea.
 * Book I, epistle xi, line 27

 * Pauper enim non est, cui rerum suppetit usus. si ventri bene, si lateri est pedibusque tuis, nil divitiae poterunt regales addere maius.
 * He is not poor who has enough of things to use. If it is well with your belly, chest and feet, the wealth of kings can give you nothing more.
 * Book I, epistle xii, line 4

 * Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors
 * What the discordant harmony of circumstances would and could effect.
 * Book I, epistle xii, line 19

 * Nam neque divitibus contingunt gaudia solis, nec vixit male, qui natus moriensque fefellit.
 * For joys fall not to the rich alone, nor has he lived ill, who from birth to death has passed unknown.
 * Book I, epistle xvii, line 9

 * Sedit qui timuit ne non succederet.
 * He who feared that he would not succeed sat still.
 * Book I, epistle xvii, line 37

 * Semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum.
 * Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.
 * Book I, epistle xviii, line 71

 * Qualem commendes, etiam atque etiam aspice, ne mox incutiant aliena tibi peccata pudorem.
 * Look round and round the man you recommend, For yours will be the shame should he offend.
 * Book I, epistle xviii, line 76 (translated by John Conington).
 * Variant translation: Study carefully the character of the one you recommend, lest his misdeeds bring you shame.

 * Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.
 * It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire.
 * Book I, epistle xviii, line 84

 * Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici; Expertus metuit.
 * To have a great man for an intimate friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.
 * Book I, epistle xviii, line 86

 * Interdum volgus rectum videt, est ubi peccat.
 * At times the world sees straight, but many times the world goes astray.
 * Book II, epistle i, line 63

 * Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio.
 * Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium.
 * Book II, epistle i, lines 156–157

 * Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes.
 * The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.
 * Book II, epistle ii, line 55

 * Natales grate numeras?
 * Do you count your birthdays with gratitude?
 * Book II, epistle ii, line 210

Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC)

 * Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter adsuitur pannus.
 * Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour.
 * Line 14

 * Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
 * Struggling to be brief I become obscure.
 * Line 25

 * Non satis est pulchra esse poemata; dulcia sunto Et, quocumque uolent, animum auditoris agunto.
 * Mere grace is not enough: a play should thrill The hearer's soul, and move it at its will.
 * Line 99 (tr. John Conington)

 * Si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi.
 * If you wish me to weep, you yourself Must first feel grief.
 * Line 102

 * Format enim Natura prius nos intus ad omnem Fortunarum habitum, juvat, aut impellit ad iram, Aut ad humum moerore gravi deducit, et angit.
 * For nature forms our spirits to receive Each bent that outward circumstance can give: She kindles pleasure, bids resentment glow, Or bows the soul to earth in hopeless woe.
 * Line 108 (tr. Conington)

 * Difficile est proprie communia dicere.
 * It is difficult to speak of the universal specifically.
 * Line 128

Interpres.''
 * ''Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus
 * Nor word for word too faithfully translate.
 * Line 133 (tr. John Dryden)

 * Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
 * The mountains will be in labor, and a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth.
 * Line 139. Horace is hereby poking fun at heroic labours producing meager results; his line is also an allusion to one of Æsop's fables, The Mountain in Labour.

 * In medias res.
 * Into the middle things.
 * Line 148

Desperat tractata nitescere posse relinquit.''
 * ''Et quae
 * And what he fears he cannot make attractive with his touch he abandons.
 * Line 149 (tr. H. R. Fairclough)

 * Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.
 * To have good sense, is the first principle and fountain of writing well.
 * Line 309

 * Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui, præter laudem nullius avaris. . .
 * The Muse gave the Greeks their native character, and allowed them to speak in noble tones, they who desired nothing but praise.
 * Line 323

 * Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis, ut cito dicta percipiant animi dociles teneantque fideles: omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat.
 * When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.
 * Lines 335–337; Edward Charles Wickham translation

 * Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, lectorem delectando pariterque monendo.
 * He wins every hand who mingles profit with pleasure, by delighting and instructing the reader at the same time.
 * Line 343

 * ... Siquid tamen olim scripseris, in Maeci descendat iudicis auris et patris et nostras, nonumque prematur in annum membranis intus positis; delere licebit quod non edideris; nescit uox missa reuerti.
 * But if ever you shall write any thing, let it be submitted to the ears of Metius [Tarpa], who is a judge, and your father’s, and mine; and let it be suppressed till the ninth year, your papers being laid up within your own custody. You will have it in your power to blot out what you have not made public: a word once sent abroad can never return.
 * lines 386-390

 * Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus.
 * Some faults may claim forgiveness.
 * Line 347 (tr. Conington)

 * Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus;
 * I am displeased when sometimes even the worthy Homer nods;
 * Whence the familiar expression, Even Homer nods (i.e. No one is perfect: even the wisest make mistakes).
 * Line 359

 * Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae.
 * Mediocrity in poets has never been tolerated by either men, or gods, or booksellers.
 * Lines 372–373

 * Nec satis apparet, cur versus factitet.
 * None knows the reason why this curse Was sent on him, this love of making verse.
 * Line 470 (tr. Conington)

Classical and Foreign Quotations

 * Quotes reported in Classical and Foreign Quotations (1904)

 * Abnormis sapiens crassaque Minerva.
 * Of strong good sense, untutored in the schools.
 * Ep. 2, 2, 3.
 * i.e., Full of mother-wit.

 * Ab ovo Usque ad mala.
 * From the eggs to the apples.
 * S. 1, 3, 6.
 * From beginning to end: “eggs and apples” being respectively the first and last courses at a Roman dinner. The phrase applies to any topic, or speaker, that monopolises the whole of the conversation.

 * Absentem qui rodit amicum, Qui non defendit alio culpante, solutos Qui captat risus hominum, famamque dicacis; Fingere qui non visa potest, commissa tacere Qui nequit, hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto.
 * The man that will malign an absent friend, Or when his friend’s attacked, does not defend; Who seeks to raise a laugh, be thought a wit; Declares “he saw,” when he invented it; Who blabs a secret—Roman, friend, take care! His heart is black, of such a man beware.
 * S. 1, 4, 81.
 * A Blackguard.

 * ''Adsit Regula, peccatis quæ pœnas irroget æquas Ne scutica dignum horribili sectere flagello.
 * Be just: and mete to crime its condign pain; Nor use the murd’rous lash where suits the cane.
 * S. 1, 3, 117.

Misattributed

 * Ars longa, vita brevis.
 * Art is long, life is short.
 * Seneca's (De Brevitate Vitae, 1.1) Latin translation of the Greek by Hippocrates.

title: Horace


text:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) was an English poet, critic and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets.
 * See also:
 * The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1797–98; 1817)

Quotes

Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there.
 * Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
 * "Epitaph on an Infant", l. 1 (1794)

I love the languid patience of thy face.'''
 * '''Poor little foal of an oppressèd race!
 * "To a Young Ass", l. 1 (1794)

 * Blest hour! it was a luxury — to be!
 * "Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement", l. 43 (1795)

A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself, And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain.
 * "Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
 * The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem, lines 13-22 (1798)

Yea! every thing that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, whereso'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty.'''
 * '''Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!
 * "France: An Ode", st. 1 (1798)

And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.
 * Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
 * "France: An Ode", st. 5 (1798)

Unhelped by any wind.
 * The frost performs its secret ministry,
 * "Frost at Midnight", l. 1 (1798)

Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet moon.
 * Or if the secret ministry of frost
 * "Frost at Midnight", l. 72 (1798)

(Portentous-sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing an obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, "Where is it?"
 * Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place
 * "Fears in Solitude", l. 81 (1798)

On a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother, Abel.
 * He saw a Lawyer killing a viper
 * "The Devil's Thoughts", st. 4 (1799)

Is pride that apes humility.'''
 * '''And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
 * "The Devil's Thoughts", st. 6 (1799)

Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.
 * Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows,
 * "The Homeric Hexameter" (translated from Schiller) (1799)

In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.
 * In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;
 * "The Ovidian Elegiac Metre" (translated from Schiller) (1799)

Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.
 * All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
 * "Love", st. 1 (1799)

 * Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn.
 * "A Christmas Carol", st. viii (1799)

For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom No sound is dissonant which tells of life.
 * A charm
 * "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison", st. 3 (1800)

Than all the family of Fame!
 * Tranquillity! thou better name
 * "Ode to Tranquillity", st. 1 (1801)

The present works of present man — A wild and dreamlike trade of blood and guile, Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!
 * Aloof with hermit-eye I scan
 * "Ode to Tranquillity", st. 4 (1801)

 * What is an Epigram? a dwarfish whole, Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
 * "What is an Epigram?", The Morning Post, (23 September 1802)

From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks.
 * Trochee trips from long to short;
 * "Metrical Feet" (1806)

There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy. You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within.'''
 * '''And in Life's noisiest hour,
 * "The Presence of Love" (1807), lines 1-4

How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.'''
 * '''And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
 * "The Presence of Love" (1807), lines 10-11

Why Love must needs be blind, But this the best of all I hold,— His eyes are in his mind. What outward form and feature are He guesseth but in part; But what within is good and fair He seeth with the heart.
 * I have heard of reasons manifold
 * "To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation That Women Have No Souls", st. 2–3 (1812)

And agony that cannot be remembered.
 * I stood in unimaginable trance
 * Remorse (1813), Act iv, scene 3

 * 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.
 * "The Statesman's Manual" (1816)

And his good sword rust; His soul is with the saints, I trust.
 * The knight's bones are dust,
 * "The Knight's Tomb" (c. 1817)

Appear the Immortals, Never alone.
 * Never, believe me,
 * "The Visit of the Gods (Imitated from Schiller)", l. 1 (1817)

Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!
 * To know, to esteem, to love—and then to part,
 * "On taking Leave of ————", l. 1 (1817)

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.
 * Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand,
 * "Fancy in Nubibus", l. 11 (1818)

Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue, Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
 * With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
 * "On Donne's Poetry" (c. 1818)

 * Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.
 * Said in 1821, as quoted in Letters and Conversations of S.T. Coleridge (1836) by Thomas Allsop

 * The Eighth Commandment was not made for bards.
 * "The Reproof and Reply" (1823); the eighth commandment is "Thou shalt not steal".

When Youth and I lived in't together.
 * Nought cared this Body for wind or weather
 * "Youth and Age", st. 1 (1823–1832)

Friendship is a sheltering tree'''; Oh the joys that came down shower-like, Of friendship, love, and liberty, Ere I was old!
 * '''Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
 * "Youth and Age", st. 2 (1823–1832)

The presence of the love it would conceal.'''
 * '''In many ways doth the full heart reveal
 * Poems Written in Later Life, motto (1826)

 * My eyes make pictures, when they are shut.
 * "A Day-Dream", l. 1 (1828)

All well defined, and several stinks.
 * I counted two and seventy stenches,
 * "Cologne" (1828)

Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
 * The river Rhine, it is well known,
 * "Cologne" (1828)

 * The happiness of life … is made up of minute fractions — the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.
 * "The Improvisatore", in The Amulet for 1828, ed. S. C. Hall. Reprinted in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetical Works I, Part 2, ed. J.C.C. Mays (Princeton, NJ: Bollingen Series LXXV/Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 1060.

A poet lies, or that which once seemed he — Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S.T.C! That he, who many a year, with toil of breath, Found death in life, may here find life in death.
 * Beneath this sod
 * "Epitaph", written for himself (1833)

 * 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! and what then?
 * "Anima Poetæ : From the Unpublished Note-books of Samuel Taylor Coleridge" (1895) edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, p. 238

Kubla Khan (1797 or 1798)

 * "Kubla Khan, or A Vision in a Dream" (written 1797 or 1798, published in 1816 as a "Fragment") · Full text at Wikisource

A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.'''
 * '''In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
 * So twice five miles of fertile ground

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced:
 * But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail : And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river.
 * Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
 * Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves.'''
 * '''The shadow of the dome of pleasure

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!'''
 * '''It was a miracle of rare device,

In a vision once I saw''': It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. '''Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.'''
 * '''A damsel with a dulcimer

Christabel (written 1797–1801, published 1816)
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch.
 * Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
 * Part I, l. 6

 * And the spring comes slowly up this way.
 * Part I, l. 22

The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
 * There is not wind enough to twirl
 * Part I, l. 48

Beautiful exceedingly!
 * A lady so richly clad as she,
 * Part I, l. 67

All made out of the carver's brain.
 * Carv'd with figures strange and sweet,
 * Part I, l. 179

And lay down in her loveliness.
 * Her gentle limbs did she undress,
 * Part I, l. 237

 * A sight to dream of, not to tell!
 * Part I, l. 252

 * Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!
 * Conclusion to Part I, l. 289

For the blue sky bends over all!'''
 * '''Saints will aid if men will call:
 * Conclusion to Part I, l. 330

Knells us back to a world of death.
 * Each matin bell, the Baron saith,
 * Part II, l. 332

Like cliffs which had been rent asunder: A dreary sea now flows between.
 * They stood aloof, the scars remaining,—
 * Part II, l. 421

But whispering tongues can poison truth, And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
 * Alas! they had been friends in youth;
 * Part II, l. 408

Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm.
 * Perhaps 't is pretty to force together
 * Conclusion to Part II, l. 666

Dejection: An Ode (1802)

 * Full text online

 * The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.
 * St. 1

In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!
 * Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
 * St. 2

And in our life alone does Nature live.'''
 * '''O lady! we receive but what we give
 * St. 4

Enveloping the earth.'''
 * '''A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
 * St. 4

We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light.'''
 * '''Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud —
 * St. 5

Wallenstein (1800)
The fair humanities of old religion, The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanished. They live no longer in the faith of reason!
 * The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
 * Wallenstein, Part I: The Piccolimini (1800), Act ii, scene 4 (translated from Schiller)

 * I've lived and loved.
 * Wallenstein, Part I: The Piccolimini (1800), Act ii, scene 6

Cannot be good.
 * The doing evil to avoid an evil
 * Wallenstein, Part I: The Piccolimini (1800), Act iv, scene 6

With golden exhalations of the dawn.
 * Clothing the palpable and the familiar
 * Wallenstein, Part II: The Death of Wallenstein (1800), Act v, scene 1

Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow.
 * Often do the spirits
 * Wallenstein, Part II: The Death of Wallenstein (1800), Act v, scene 1

Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni (1802)

In his steep course?''' So long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, О sovran Blanc!
 * '''Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
 * St. 1

Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity!
 * Around thee and above,
 * St. 1

 * Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.

 * Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

 * Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost.

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer, I worshipped the Invisible alone.
 * O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,

Thou owest!''' not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. '''Awake, Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.'''
 * '''Awake, my soul! not only passive praise

Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flower Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet ? 'God!' let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, 'God!' 'God! ' sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds ! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, 'God!'
 * Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven

Ye signs and wonders of the element! Utter forth ' God,' and fill the hills with praise!'''
 * '''Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!

To rise before me — Rise, oh, ever rise; Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth! Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, '''Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.'''
 * Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud

The Friend (1809–1810)

 * The Friend: A Series of Essays (London: Gale and Curtis, 1812)

The holiest thing alive.
 * A mother is a mother still;
 * No. 6 (September 21, 1809), p. 91

 * An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat countries, with spire-steeples, which, as they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and star.
 * No. 14 (November 23, 1809), p. 223

 * The Dwarf sees farther than the Giant, when he has the Giant's shoulders to mount on.
 * No. 15 (November 30, 1809), p. 228
 * Cf. Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676): "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants".

Honour or wealth, with all his worth and pains! '''It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, If any man obtain that which he merits, Or any merit that which he obtains.'''   REPLY For shame, dear Friend! renounce this canting strain! … Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures, L OVE and L IGHT, And CALM T HOUGHTS, regular as infants' breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, H IMSELF, his M AKER, and the Angel D EATH.
 * How seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits
 * No. 19 (December 26, 1809), p. 292

Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811–1818)

 * Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (London: George Bell and Sons, 1883)

 * Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, etc., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.
 * Part I: "Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. 1811–1812", Lecture I, p. 36

 * The poet is not only the man made to solve the riddle of the universe, but he is also the man who feels where it is not solved.
 * Part I: "Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. 1811–1812", Lecture VIII, p. 105

 * 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.
 * Part II: "The Lectures and Notes of 1818", Section I: "Poetry, the Drama, and Shakespeare", § "Definitions of Poetry", p. 183

 * But alas! the exceptions prove the rule. For who will dare to force his way out of the crowd,—not of the mere vulgar,—but of the vain and banded aristocracy of intellect, and presume to join the almost supernatural beings that stand by themselves aloof?
 * Part II: "The Lectures and Notes of 1818", Section I: "Poetry, the Drama, and Shakespeare", § "The Drama generally and Public Taste", p. 214

 * Iago's soliloquy—the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful it is!
 * Part II: "The Lectures and Notes of 1818", Section IV: "Notes on Some Other Plays of Shakespeare", § "Othello", p. 388

On the Principles of Genial Criticism (1814)

 * Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former.

 * The most general definition of beauty ... Multeity in Unity.

 * The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.

Biographia Literaria (1817)

 * Full text online

 * Not the poem which we have read, but that to which we return, with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry.
 * Ch. I

 * Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.
 * Ch. I

 * Experience informs us that the first defence of weak minds is to recriminate.
 * Ch. II

 * Indignation at literary wrongs I leave to men born under happier stars. I cannot afford it.
 * Ch. II

 * Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful mind.
 * Ch. IV

 * An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol.
 * Ch. IX

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

 * Never pursue literature as a trade.
 * Ch. XI

 * Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
 * Ch. XII

 * During the act of knowledge itself, the objective and subjective are so instantly united, that we cannot determine to which of the two the priority belongs.
 * Ch. XII

 * The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.
 * Ch. XIII

 * The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate: or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.
 * Ch. XIII

 * The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space.
 * Ch. XIII

 * Our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination.
 * Ch. XIV

 * That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
 * Ch. XIV

 * The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination.
 * Ch. XIV

 * This power...reveals itself in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.
 * Ch. XIV

 * It has been observed before that images, however beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented in words, do not of themselves characterize the poet. They become proofs of original genius only as far as they are modified by a predominant passion; or by associated thoughts or images awakened by that passion; or when they have the effect of reducing multitude to unity, or succession to an instant; or lastly, when a human and intellectual life is transferred to them from the poet's spirit.
 * Ch. XV

 * No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.
 * Ch. XV

 * Shakespeare, no mere child of nature ; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge became habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class ; to that power which seated him on one of the two glorysmitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton аs his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood ; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own Ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakspeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself.
 * Ch. XV

 * The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakespeare, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the licence allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible.
 * On The Comedy of Errors, in Ch. XV

 * The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.
 * Ch. XVII

 * In poetry, in which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of deliberation and deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of a blameless style; namely, its untranslatableness in words of the same language without injury to the meaning.
 * Ch. XXII

On Poesy or Art (1818)

 * Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation.

 * The artist must imitate that which is within the thing, that which is active through form and figure, and discourses to us by symbols.

 * The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every ... minutest fiber.

Table Talk (1821–1834)

 * Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge (1835) by Henry N. Coleridge The date that follows each quote refers to when the remark was made.

 * Schiller has the material sublime.
 * 29 December 1822

 * Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from, — as pickpockets are observed commonly to walk with their hands in their breeches' pockets.
 * 4 January 1823

 * Kean is original; but he copies from himself. His rapid descents from the hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial, though sometimes productive of great effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning. I do not think him thorough-bred gentleman enough to play Othello.
 * 17 April 1823

 * The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the Past; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity.
 * 2 June 1824

 * Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.
 * 24 June 1827

 * 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.
 * 12 July 1827

 * The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost.
 * 21 July 1827

 * The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
 * 23 July 1827

 * Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.
 * 30 August 1827

 * Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.
 * 9 May 1830

 * That passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense.
 * 9 May 1830

 * The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast.
 * 9 May 1830

 * Shakespeare is the Spinosistic deity — an omnipresent creativeness. Milton is the deity of prescience; he stands ab extra, and drives a fiery chariot and four, making the horses feel the iron curb which holds them in. Shakspeare's poetry is characterless; that is, it does not reflect the individual Shakspeare; but John Milton himself is in every line of the Paradise Lost. Shakspeare's rhymed verses are excessively condensed, — epigrams with the point every where; but in his blank dramatic verse he is diffused, with a linked sweetness long drawn out.
 * 12 May 1830

 * The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It is awfully absurd to make a man invoke God's wrath upon himself, if he speaks false; it is, in my judgment, a sin to do so.
 * 25 May 1830

 * 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.
 * 31 May 1830

 * Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright enemy.
 * June 7, 1830

 * Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
 * June 14, 1830

 * He told me that facts gave birth to, and were the absolute ground of, principles; to which I said, that unless he had a principle of selection, he would not have taken notice of those facts upon which he grounded his principle. You must have a lantern in your hand to give light, otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, for you cannot find them; and if you could, you could not arrange them.
 * 21 September 1830

 * 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.
 * 22 September 1830

 * In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
 * October 5, 1830

 * If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!
 * 18 December 1831

 * The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous.
 * 1 September 1832

 * In the treatment of nervous cases, he is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
 * 2 January 1833

 * You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the market from 8 d. to 6 d. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after all.
 * 17 March 1833

 * The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect.
 * 29 June 1833

 * I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, which I fear has gone on for an hour without any stop at all.
 * 29 June 1833

 * The true key to the declension of the Roman empire — which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work — may be stated in two words: — the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.
 * 15 August 1833

 * Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.
 * 20 August 1833

 * I am never very forward in offering spiritual consolation to any one in distress or disease. I believe that such resources, to be of any service, must be self-evolved in the first instance. I am something of the Quaker's mind in this, and am inclined to wait for the spirit.
 * 20 August 1833

 * Farce may often border on tragedy; indeed, farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is.
 * 20 August 1833

 * If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.
 * 30 August 1833

 * Dryden's genius was of that sort which catches fire by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot by driving fast.
 * 1 November 1833

 * I have known books written on Tolerance, the proper title of which would be — intolerant or intolerable books on tolerance. Should not a man who writes a book expressly to inculcate tolerance learn to treat with respect, or at least with indulgence, articles of faith which tens of thousands ten times told of his fellow-subjects or his fellow-creatures believe with all their souls, and upon the truth of which they rest their tranquillity in this world, and their hopes of salvation in the next, — those articles being at least maintainable against his arguments, and most certainly innocent in themselves?
 * 3 January 1834

 * I am by the law of my nature a reasoner. A person who should suppose I meant by that word, an arguer, would not only not understand me, but would understand the contrary of my meaning. I can take no interest whatever in hearing or saying any thing merely as a fact — merely as having happened. It must refer to something within me before I can regard it with any curiosity or care. My mind is always energic — I don't mean energetic; I require in every thing what, for lack of another word, I may call propriety, — that is, a reason why the thing is at all, and why it is there or then rather than elsewhere or at another time.
 * 1 March 1834

 * I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid drooping! The sympathy of the poet with the subjects of his poetry is particularly remarkable in Shakspeare and Chaucer; but what the first effects by a strong act of imagination and mental metamorphosis, the last does without any effort, merely by the inborn kindly joyousness of his nature. How well we seem to know Chaucer! How absolutely nothing do we know of Shakspeare!
 * 15 March 1834

 * Those who argue that England may safely depend upon a supply of foreign corn, if it grow none or an insufficient quantity of its own, forget that they are subjugating the necessaries of life itself to the mere luxuries or comforts of society. Is it not certain that the price of corn abroad will be raised upon us as soon as it is once known that we must buy?—and when that fact is known, in what sort of a situation shall we be?
 * 'Corn Laws', 3 May 1834

 * No state can be such properly, which is not self-subsistent at least; for no state that is not so, is essentially independent. The nation that cannot even exist without the commodity of another nation, is in effect the slave of that other nation.
 * 'Corn Laws.—Modern Political Economy.', 20 June 1834

 * I am dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope — those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love, — for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream.
 * 10 July 1834

Aids to Reflection (1825)

 * Aids to Reflection, ed. Thomas Fenby (Liverpool: Edward Howell, 1873)

 * There is one art, of which every man should be master, the art of REFLECTION. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all? In like manner, there is one knowledge, which it is in every man's interest and duty to acquire, namely, SELF-KNOWLEDGE: or to what end was man alone, of all animals, endowed by the Creator with the faculty of self-consciousness?
 * The Author's Preface, pp. xvi–xvii

 * 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.
 * Aphorism 1, p. 1

 * 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.
 * Aphorism 1, p. 1

 * Manly energy … is the proper rendering [for αρετην], and not virtue, at least in the present and ordinary acceptation of the word.
 * Comment on Aphorism 12, pp. 6–7

 * It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to distinguish; but it is a still worse, that distinguishes in order to divide. In the former, we may contemplate the source of superstition and idolatry; in the latter of schism, heresy, and a seditious and sectarian spirit.
 * Aphorism 26, p. 17

 * He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
 * Aphorism 63, p. 89

 * The anxiety to be admired is a loveless passion …, loud on the hustings, gay in the ball-room, mute and sullen at the family fireside.
 * Comment on Aphorism 101, pp. 169–170.

 * “They did not like to retain God in their knowledge” (Rom. i. 28), and though they could not extinguish “the Light that lighteth every man,” and which “shone in the darkness;” yet because the darkness could not comprehend the Light, they refused to bear witness of it, and worshipped, instead, the shaping mist, which the Light had drawn upward from the ground (i.e., from the mere animal nature and instinct), and which that Light alone had made visible (i.e., by super-inducing on the animal instinct the principle of self-consciousness)
 * Footnote to Aphorism 106 part 14, p. 206

 * In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends. … But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.
 * Aphorism 107, p. 206

 * As in respect of the first wonder we are all on the same level, how comes it that the philosophic mind should, in all ages, be the privilege of a few? The most obvious reason is this: The wonder takes place before the period of reflection, and (with the great mass of mankind) long before the individual is capable of directing his attention freely and consciously to the feeling, or even to its exciting causes. Surprise (the form and dress which the wonder of ignorance usually puts on) is worn away, if not precluded, by custom and familiarity.
 * Sequelae to Aphorism 107, pp. 206–207

Work Without Hope (1825)

 * Full text online

The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing — And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
 * All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair —
 * l. 1

For me ye bloom not!''' Glide, rich streams, away! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? '''Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live.'''
 * '''Bloom, O ye Amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
 * l. 9

Duty Surviving Self-Love (1826)

 * Full text online

Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt.''' Yet why at others' Wanings should'st thou fret? Then only might'st thou feel a just regret, Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light In selfish forethought of neglect and slight.
 * '''Unchanged within, to see all changed without,

While, and on whom, thou may'st — shine on! nor heed Whether the object by reflected light Return thy radiance or absorb it quite: And tho' 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.'''
 * O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed,

Notebooks

 * I lay too many Eggs in the hot Sands of this Wilderness, the World! with Ostrich Carelessness & Ostrich Oblivion. The greater part, I trust, are trod underfoot, & smashed; but yet no small number crawl forth into Life, some to furnish Feathers for the Caps of others, & still more to plume the Shafts in the Quivers of my Enemies, of them that lie in wait against my Soul.
 * Notebooks, September/early October 1802

Letters

 * I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz. that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.
 * Letter to his brother (1791)

 * My next shall be a more sober & chastised Epistle — but you see I was in the humour for metaphors — and to tell thee the Truth, I have so often serious reasons to quarrel with my Inclination, that I do not chuse to contradict it for Trifles.
 * Letter to Robert Southey (6 July 1794)

 * Your Sensibilities are tempestuous — you feel Indignation at Weakness — Now Indignation is the handsome Brother of Anger & Hatred — His looks are "lovely in terror" — yet still remember, who are his Relations.
 * Letter to Robert Southey (29 December 1794)

 * From my early reading of Faery Tales, & Genii &c &c — my mind had been habituated to the Vast — & I never regarded my senses in any way as the criteria of my belief. I regulated all my creeds by my conceptions not by my sight — even at that age. Should children be permitted to read Romances, & Relations of Giants & Magicians, & Genii? — I know all that has been said against it; but I have formed my faith in the affirmative. — I know no other way of giving the mind a love of "the Great," & "the Whole." — Those who have been led by the same truths step by step thro' the constant testimony of their senses, seem to me to want a sense which I possess — They contemplate nothing but parts — and all parts are necessarily little — and the Universe to them is but a mass of little things. It is true, the mind may become credulous and prone to superstition by the former method; — but are not the experimentalists credulous even to madness in believing any absurdity, rather than believe the grandest truths, if they have not the testimony of their own senses in their favor? I have known some who have been rationally educated, as it is styled. They were marked by a microscopic acuteness; but when they looked at great things, all became a blank, and they saw nothing, and denied that any thing could be seen, and uniformly put the negative of a power for the possession of a power, and called the want of imagination judgment, and the never being moved to rapture philosophy.
 * Letter to Thomas Poole (16 October 1797)

 * I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark.
 * Letter to Sir Humphry Davy (15 July 1800)

 * God knows, it is as much as I can do to put meat and bread on my own table; & hourly some poor starving wretch comes to my door, to put in his claim for a part of it.
 * Letter to Thomas Poole (23 March 1801)

 * Metaphisics is a word that you, my dear Sir! are no great friend to / but yet you will agree, that a great Poet must be, implicitè if not explicitè, a profound Metaphysician. He may not have it in logical coherence, in his Brain & Tongue; but he must have it by Tact / for all sounds, & all forms of human nature he must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent Desart, the eye of a North American Indian tracing the footsteps of an Enemy upon the Leaves that strew the Forest — ; the Touch of a Blind Man feeling the face of a darling Child.
 * Letter to William Sotheby (13 July 1802)

 * But metre itself implies a passion, i.e. a state of excitement, both in the Poet's mind, & is expected in that of the Reader.
 * Letter to William Sotheby (13 July 1802)

 * Never to see or describe any interesting appearance in nature, without connecting it by dim analogies with the moral world, proves faintness of Impression. Nature has her proper interest; & he will know what it is, who believes & feels, that every Thing has a life of it's own, & that we are all one Life.
 * Letter to William Sotheby (10 September 1802)

 * He has no native Passion, because he is not a Thinker — & has probably weakened his Intellect by the haunting Fear of becoming extravagant.
 * Letter to William Sotheby (10 September 1802)

 * Moral obligation is to me so very strong a Stimulant, that in 9 cases out of ten it acts as a Narcotic. The Blow that should rouse, stuns me.
 * Letter to Henry Crabb Robinson (12 March 1811)

 * The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise. Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where "I admire" is but a synonyme for "I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!
 * Letter to Thomas Allsop (30 March 1820)

 * It is a flat'ning Thought, that the more we have seen, the less we have to say.
 * Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)

 * Nature is a wary wily long-breathed old Witch, tough-lived as a Turtle and divisible as the Polyp, repullulative in a thousand Snips and Cuttings, integra et in toto! She is sure to get the better of Lady MIND in the long run, and to take her revenge too — transforms our To Day into a Canvass dead-colored to receive the dull featureless Portrait of Yesterday.
 * Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)

 * How many of our virtues originate in the fear of Death — & that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian Sensibility over the sorrows of our human Brethren and Sisteren, we are in fact, tho' perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own End — for who sincerely pities Sea-sickness, Toothache, or a fit of the Gout in a lusty Good-liver of 50?
 * Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)

 * Summer has set in with his usual severity.
 * Letter to Charles Lamb (1826)

Misattributed

 * Above all things I entreat you to preserve your faith in Christ. It is my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, my peace amid tumult. For all the evil I have committed, my gracious pardon; and for every effort, my exceeding great reward. I have found it to be so. I can smile with pity at the infidel whose vanity makes him dream that I should barter such a blessing for the few subtleties from the school of the cold-blooded sophists.
 * Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 235, and various other sources beginning no earlier than 1880; actually an elaboration and modification of a quote by D.W. Clark, The Mount of Blessing (1854), p. 56: "It shall be my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, and its promised rewards shall cheer me in all trials, and sustain me in all sufferings".

Quotes about Coleridge

 * And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But, like a hawk encumber'd with his hood, Explaining metaphysics to the nation – I wish he would explain his Explanation.
 * Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), Canto 1, Dedication, line 13

 * He is a kind, good soul, full of religion and affection and poetry and animal magnetism. His cardinal sin is that he wants will. He has no resolution. He shrinks from pain or labour in any of its shapes. His very atti- tude bespeaks this. He never straightens his knee-joints. He stoops with his fat, ill-shapen shoulders, and in walking he does not tread, but shovel and slide. My father would call it "skluffing." He is also always busied to keep, by strong and frequent inhalations, the water of his mouth from over-flowing, and his eyes have a look of anxious impotence. He would do with all his heart, but he knows he dares not. The conversation of the man is much as I anticipated — a forest of thoughts, some true, many false, more part dubious, all of them ingenious in some degree, often in a high degree. But there is no method in his talk; he wanders like a man sailing among many currents, whithersoever his lazy mind directs him; and, what is more unpleasant, he preaches, or rather soliloquises. He cannot speak, he can only tal-k (so he names it). Hence I found him unprofitable, even tedious; but we parted very good friends, I promising to go back and see him some evening a promise which I fully intend to keep. I sent him a copy of Meister, about which we had some friendly talk. I reckon him a man of great and useless genius: a strange, not at all a great man.
 * Thomas Carlyle, in a letter to his brother (24 June 1824)

 * Coleridge was perhaps the most celebrated of all drinkers of laudanum, and splendid studies have been written of its influence on his Muse. Nobody seems to have paid attention to its influence on his bowels, for laudanum was a rare constipator. How much of The Ancient Mariner was the result of intestinal stasis?
 * Robertson Davies, Murther and Walking Spirits (1991), part II, section 19

 * The name of Coleridge is one of the few English names of our time which are likely to be oftener pronounced, and to be symbolical of more important things, in proportion as the inward workings of the age manifest themselves more and more in outward facts.

 * He has been the great awakener in this country of the spirit of philosophy, within the bounds of traditional opinions.
 * John Stuart Mill, “Coleridge”. London and Westminster Review. (March 1840).
 * The author of Biographia Literaria was already a ruined man. Sometimes, however, to be a "ruined man" is itself a vocation.
 * T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), p. 69

 * Coleridge...became indeed the greatest of Burke's followers. Like Burke, he was intensely religious. Religion, he believed, was always "the centre of gravity in a realm, to which all other things must and will accommodate themselves". Though a metaphysician, he thought metaphysics had no place in politics; and he was as hostile as Burke to abstract political systems allegedly based on pure reason... Hence for Coleridge Jacobinism was a monstrous hybrid, "made up in part of despotism and in part of abstract reason misapplied to objects that belong entirely to experience and the understanding". Jacobinism pandered to the brute passions of the mob in order to erect a society and government based on abstract reason instead of on established institutions and experience. England, in contrast, had the good fortune to possess social institutions that had "formed themselves out of our proper needs and interests..."
 * Ian Gilmour, Inside Right: A Study of Conservatism (1977), p. 69

 * For Coleridge, the principle of the British constitution was the harmonious balance between permanence and progression or law and liberty. The landed interest and the House of Lords provided permanence and stability, the mercantile classes and the House of Commons ensured progression and personal freedom, and the Monarch supplied unity and cohesion. But all this depended upon a continuing improvement in civilization which was the responsibility of the national Church, "the third great venerable estate of the realm". The Church had a vital educational duty and function. It should through education provide everyone with the chance of bettering their children and impart the knowledge necessary to qualify "every nature" to be "the free subject of a civilised realm". Coleridge pointed out that for nearly 150 years Englishmen had been freer than the citizens of any other known country. This was due to our "insular privilege of a self-evolving constitution".
 * Ian Gilmour, Inside Right: A Study of Conservatism (1977), p. 70

 * He was the first poet I ever knew. His genius at that time had angelic wings, and fed on manna. He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort; but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him from off his feet.
 * William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (1818).

 * The genius of Coleridge is like a sunken treasure ship, and Coleridge a diver too timid and lazy to bring its riches to the surface.
 * Hugh Kingsmill, The Progress of a Biographer (1949) p. 94

 * His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Arch angel a little damaged ... Coleridge is absent but 4 miles, & the neighbourhood of such a man is as exciting as the presence of 50 ordinary Persons.
 * Charles Lamb, in a letter to William Wordsworth (26 April 1816)

 * Most of the great critics of English poetry have also been poets: Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Shelley, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, to name a few.
 * Alicia Ostriker Interview

title: Samuel Taylor Coleridge