Frases de Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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“Afinidade constitui amizade, mas no amor existe uma certa animosidade, ou paixão resistente. Cada um aspira em ser o outro, e ambos juntos formam um novo todo.”

“Senso comum num grau incomum é o que o mundo chama de sabedoria.”

“A curiosidade de um mente nobre sinceramente cessa onde o amor pela verdade não a encoraja a ir além e o amor pelo seu semelhante a convida a parar.”

“Quem se vangloria de ter conquistado uma multidão de amigos nunca teve um.”

“Em política, o que começa com o medo acaba, geralmente, com a loucura.”

“Apenas os sábios possuem ideias; a maior parte da humanidade é possuída por elas.”

“Não houve até hoje grande poeta que não fosse, ao mesmo tempo, profundo filósofo.”

“A consciência é o pulso da razão: as suas pulsações são outras tantas advertências.”

“O melhor médico é aquele que mais esperança infunde.”

“Aquele que começa a amar o cristianismo mais do que a verdade acabará por amar a sua seita ou a sua igreja mais do que o cristianismo, e depois por amar a si mesmo mais do que qualquer outra coisa.”

“Para a maioria dos homens, a experiência é como as luzes da popa de um navio que só iluminam o sulco deixado atrás.”

“Os críticos frequentemente são pessoas que teriam sido poetas, historiadores, biógrafos, etc., se tivessem podido; colocaram o seu talento à prova aqui e ali e não conseguiram. Sendo assim, tornaram-se críticos.”

“Nunca ninguém foi um grande poeta sem ter sido ao mesmo tempo um grande filósofo.”

“Prosa: palavras na sua melhor ordem; poesia: as melhores palavras na melhor ordem.”

“The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust;
His soul is with the saints, I trust.”

“In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.”

“The Dwarf sees farther than the Giant, when he has the Giant's shoulders to mount on.”

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

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

“Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
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!'.”

“An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol.”

“He has no native Passion, because he is not a Thinker — & has probably weakened his Intellect by the haunting Fear of becoming extravagant.”

“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.”

“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.”

“He saw a lawyer killing a viper
On a dunghill hard, by his own stable
And the devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of
Cain and his brother, Abel.”

“Her gentle limbs did she undress,
And lay down in her loveliness.”

“Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“What is an Epigram? a dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.”

“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 fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space.”

“I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony that cannot be remembered.”

“And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.”

“The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind.”

“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.”

“The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?”

“There is not wind enough to twirl
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.”

“Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”

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

“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!”

“Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.”