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

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Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils.
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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.
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Works of imagination should be written in very plain language the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
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As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless for it is even that constitutes its genius - the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.
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The curiosity of an honorable mind willingly rests there, where the love of truth does not urge it farther onward, and the love of its neighbor bids it stop in other words, it willingly stops at the point where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward, and charity cries, Halt!
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If you wish to assured of the truth of Christianity, try it. Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of thy belief.
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Contempt is egotism in ill- humor.
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To leave no interval between the sentence and the fulfillment of it doth beseem God only, the Immutable!
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Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
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The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. Thou shalt not is their characteristic formula.
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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.
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And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
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If people could learn history, what lessons it might teach us!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Religion is the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It alone will gentilize, if unmixed with cant.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
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Stimulate the heart to love and the mind to be early accurate, and all other virtues will rise of their own accord, and all vices will be thrown out.
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Oh, the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them!
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The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings.
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All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
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Rage is essentially vulgar.
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