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Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Age: 61 †
Born: 1772
Born: October 21
Died: 1834
Died: July 25
Critic
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Theologian
Ottery St Mary
Devon
S. T. Coleridge
Men
Largest
Sciences
Portions
Consists
Worthiest
Abstract
Aphorisms
Greatest
Aphorism
Knowledge
Exclusively
Best
Portion

More quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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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 us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Boys and girls, And women, that would groan to see a child Pull off an insect's leg, all read of war, The best amusement for our morning meal.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Frenchmen are like gunpowder, each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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For I often please myself with the fancy, now that I may have saved from oblivion the only striking passage in a whole volume, and now that I may have attracted notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Guilt is a timorous thing ere perpetration despair alone makes guilty men be bold.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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What! Did Sir W[alter] R[aleigh] believe that a male and female ounce (and, if so, why not two tigers and lions, etc?) would have produced, in a course of generations, a cat, or a cat a lion? This is Darwinizing with a vengeance.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are absolutely incapable of prayer.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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The more sparingly we make use of nonsense, the better.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea! every thing that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, whereso'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge