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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Poetry
Definitions
Attract
Cases
Faults
Verses
Ought
Express
Intended
Either
Case
Relative
Attention
Places
Fault
Words
General
Prose
Good
Poet
Definition
Propriety
Meaning
Proper
Verse

More quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Image
A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
And in Life's noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy. You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
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
Image
Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
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 watery depths, all these have vanished They live no longer in the faith of reason.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
A woman in a single state may be happy and may be miserable but most happy, most miserable, these are epithets belonging to a wife.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
An orphan's curse would drag to hell, a spirit from on high but oh! more horrible than that, is a curse in a dead man's eye!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
Some persons have contended that mathematics ought to be taught by making the illustrations obvious to the senses. Nothing can be more absurd or injurious: it ought to be our never-ceasing effort to make people think, not feel.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
Brute animals have the vowel sounds man only can utter consonants.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling, Silent as though they watched the sleeping earth!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was white as leprosy, The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
Never can true courage dwell with them, Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
To know, to esteem, to love,-and then to part, Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Image
How well he fell asleepl Like some proud river, widening toward the sea Calmly and grandly, silently and deep, Life joined eternity.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge