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.”

“Tranquillity! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame.”

“So twice five miles of fertile ground
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.”

“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.”

“I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark.”

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

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

“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.”

“Nought cared this Body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in't together.”

“I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,—
His eyes are in his mind.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.”

“Beneath this sod
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.”

“Earth with her thousand voices praises God.”

“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?”

“Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.”

“Blest hour! it was a luxury — to be!”

“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.”

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

“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 Portait of Yesterday.”

“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.”

“The most general definition of beauty … Multeity in Unity.”

“The last speech, the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity — how awful!”

“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.”

“Perhaps 't is pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.”

“Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.”