18 Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes on Literature

Samuel Taylor Coleridge quotes on literature

15. Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks.

20. The last speech [Iago's soliloquy], the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity - how awful!

23. With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, 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.

24. The Eighth Commandment was not made for bards.

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

105. Never pursue literature as a trade.

111. 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.

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

117. While [Shakespeare] darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; [Milton] 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 Shakespeare becomes all things, yet ever remaining himself.

118. Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.

123. Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.

124. Schiller has the material sublime.

126. To see him act, is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.

128. 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.

133. 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.

135. The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast.

150. Farce may often border on tragedy; indeed, farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is.

155. 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!