Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

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

• 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.

• But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
  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:

• Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
  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.

• Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
  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!

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

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

• A damsel with a dulcimer
  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.

Christabel (written 1797–1801, published 1816)

• Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
  Hath a toothless mastiff bitch.
  • Part I, l. 6

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

• 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.
  • Part I, l. 48

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Alas! they had been friends in youth;
  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.
  • Part II, l. 408

• 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.
  • Conclusion to Part II, l. 666

Dejection: An Ode (1802)

Full text online

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

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

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

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

• Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud —
  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.
  • St. 5

Wallenstein (1800)

• The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
  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!
  • 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

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

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

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

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

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

• Around thee and above,
  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!
  • St. 1

• Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.

• Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

• Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost.

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

• Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
  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.

• 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!'

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

• Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud
  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.

The Friend (1809–1810)

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

• A mother is a mother still;
  The holiest thing alive.
  • 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".

• How seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits
  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, LOVE and LIGHT,
  And CALM THOUGHTS, regular as infants' breath;
  And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,
  HIMSELF, his MAKER, and the Angel DEATH.
  • 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

• All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair —
  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.
  • l. 1

• Bloom, O ye Amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
  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.
  • l. 9

Duty Surviving Self-Love (1826)

Full text online

• Unchanged within, to see all changed without,
  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.

• O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed,
  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.

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)