Samuel Taylor Coleridge
There is no slight danger from general ignorance; and the only choice which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government is either to fall by the people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, or with them, if they are kept enslaved and ignorant.Collection: Fall
Never can true courage dwell with them, Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices.Collection: Vices
The Language of the Dream/Night is contrary to that of Waking/Day. It is a language of Images and Sensations, the various dialects of which are far less different from each other, than the various Day-Languages of Nations.Collection: Dream
The first class of readers may be compared to an hour-glass, their reading being as the sand; it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second class resembles a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third class is like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs. The fourth class may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems.Collection: Running
To doubt has more of faith ... than that blank negation of all such thoughts and feelings which is the lot of the herd of church-and-meeting trotters.Collection: Feelings
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.Collection: Ideas
Why aren't more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren't within everybody's reach.Collection: Life
To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for years has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent.Collection: Children
He holds him with his glittering eye, And listens like a three years' child.Collection: Children
A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief, In word, or sigh, or tear.Collection: Grief
The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast.Collection: Jobs
I must lay down the law as I understand it, and as I read it in books of authority.Collection: Book
We have to administer the law whether we like it or no.Collection: Law
I attended [Sir Humphry] Davy's lectures to renew my stock of metaphors.Collection: Lectures
We are now Courts of equity, and must decide the thing according to all the rights.Collection: Rights
A Court has no right to strain the law because it causes hardship.Collection: Law
Law grows, and though the principles of law remain unchanged, yet (and it is one of the advantages of the common law) their application is to be changed with the changing circumstances of the times. Some persons may call this retrogression, I call it progression of human opinion.Collection: Law
Why is it that so many of us persist in thinking that autumn is a sad season? Nature has merely fallen asleep, and her dreams must be beautiful if we are to judge by her countenance.Collection: Beautiful
Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge.Collection: Ignorance
Mr. Lyell's system of geology is just half the truth, and no more. He affirms a great deal that is true, and he denies a great deal which is equally true; which is the general characteristic of all systems not embracing the whole truth.Collection: Science
Contempt is egotism in ill- humor.Collection: Ill
Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.Collection: Genius
Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.Collection: Painting
How inimitably graceful children are in general-before they learn to dance.Collection: Dance
What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.Collection: Book
Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood.Collection: Giving
I love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.Collection: Love Is
When the whole and the parts are seen at once, as mutually producing and explaining each other, as unity in multeity, there results shapeliness.Collection: Unity
Tranquillity! thou better name Than all the family of Fame.Collection: Names
Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.Collection: Virtue
This world has angels all too few, and heaven is overflowing.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Character
Within today, tomorrow is already walking.Collection: Today
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.Collection: Men
I never knew a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other.Collection: Heart
In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends, and admiration fill up the interspace; but the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.Collection: Philosophy
Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.Collection: Funny
Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.Collection: Alcohol
A woman's friendship borders more closely on love than man's. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly acts; whilst women ask fewer proofs and more signs and expressions of attachment.Collection: Friendship
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions – the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.Collection: Smile
Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action – that the end will sanction any means.Collection: Country
Why aren’t more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren’t within everybody’s reach.Collection: Country