Quote

The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

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
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Faults
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Ought
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Intended
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Case
Relative
Attention
Places
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Verse
Poetry
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No voice but oh - the silence sank Like music on my heart.
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A Falsehood is, in one sense, a dead thing but too often it moves about, galvanized by self-will, and pushes the living out of their seats.
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He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
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I love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.
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Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
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No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
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Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
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Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it has ended in skepticism and whenever religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to willful blindness and superstition.
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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.
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So lonely 'twas that God himself Scarce seemed there to be.
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Her skin was white as leprosy.
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Too soon did the doctors of the church forget that the heart--the moral nature--was the beginning and the end, and that truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion.
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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.
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How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.
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A Gothic church is a petrified religion.
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Remorse is as the heart in which it grows If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews Of true repentance but if proud and gloomy, It is the poison tree, that pierced to the inmost, Weeps only tears of poison.
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It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort: the habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity, and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel-reading.
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There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy which must sadden, or at least soften every reflecting observer.
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I never knew a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other.
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