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Creation Rather Than Painting, Or If Painting, Yet Such, And With Such Co-presence Of The Whole Picture Flash'd At Once Upon The Eye, As The Sun Paints In A Camera Obscura. (describing His Poetic Ideal, 1817)

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Creation Rather Than Painting,

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Creation Rather Than Painting, Or If Painting, Yet Such, And With Such Co-presence Of The Whole Picture Flash'd At Once Upon The Eye, As The Sun Paints In A Camera Obscura. (describing His Poetic Ideal, 1817)

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Not One Man In A Thousand Has Either Strength Of Mind Or Goodness Of Heart To Be An Atheist.

Motives Are Symptoms Of Weakness, And Supplements For The Deficient Energy Of The Living Principle, The Law Within Us. Let Them Then Be Reserved For Those Momentous Acts And Duties In Which The Strongest And Best-balanced Natures Must Feel Themselves Deficient, And Where Humility No Less Than Prudence Prescribes Deliberation.

Not One Man In A Thousand Has Either Strength Of Mind Or Goodness Of Heart To Be An Atheist. I Repeat It. Not One Man In A Thousand Has Either Strength Of Mind Or Goodness Of Heart To Be An Atheist.

Poetry Is Certainly Something More Than Good Sense, But It Must Be Good Sense, At All Events, Just As A Palace Is More Than A House, But It Must Be A House, At Least.

A Bitter And Perplexed "what Shall I Do?" Is Worse To Man Than Worse Necessity.

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.

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.

Finally, Good Sense Is The Body Of Poetic Genius, Fancy Its Drapery, Motion Its Life, And Imagination The Soul That Is Everywhere And In Each; And Forms All Into One Graceful And Intelligent Whole.

So Will I Build My Altar In The Fields, And The Blue Sky My Fretted Dome Shall Be, And The Sweet Fragrance That The Wild Flower Yields Shall Be The Incense I Will Yield To Thee.

Poetry Has Been To Me Its Own Exceeding Great Reward; It Has Given Me The Habit Of Wishing To Discover The Good And Beautiful In All That Meets And Surrounds Me.

And Here Were Forests Ancient As The Hills, Enfolding Sunny Spots Of Greenery.

The Best Part Of Human Language, Properly So Called, Is Derived From Reflection On The Acts Of The Mind Itself.

Clergymen Who Publish Pious Frauds In The Interest Of The Church Are The Orthodox Liars Of God.

The History Of All The World Tells Us That Immoral Means Will Ever Intercept Good Ends.

'tis A Month Before The Month Of May, And The Spring Comes Slowly Up This Way.

When Thieves Come, I Bark; When Gallants, I Am Still - So Perform Both My Master's And Mistress's Will.

No Voice; But Oh - The Silence Sank Like Music On My Heart.

If A Man Could Pass Through Paradise In A Dream, And Have A Flower Presented To Him As A Pledge That His Soul Had Really Been There, And If He Found That Flower In His Hand When He Awake - Aye, What Then?

To Sentence A Man Of True Genius, To The Drudgery Of A School Is To Put A Racehorse On A Treadmill.

What Comes From The Heart Goes To The Heart

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.

Real Pain Can Alone Cure Us Of Imaginary Ills. We Feel A Thousand Miseries Till We Are Lucky Enough To Feel Misery.

Genius Of The Highest Kind Implies An Unusual Intensity Of The Modifying Power.

A Man May Devote Himself To Death And Destruction To Save A Nation; But No Nation Will Devote Itself To Death And Destruction To Save Mankind.

The Once Red Leaf, The Last Of Its Clan, That Dances As Often As Dance It Can.

Let Every Book-worm, When In Any Fragrant, Scarce Old Tome, He Discovers A Sentence, A Story, An Illustration, That Does His Heart Good, Hasten To Give It The Widest Circulation That Newspapers And Magazines, Penny And Halfpenny, Can Afford.

Acquaintance Many, And Conquaintance Few, But For Inquaintance I Know Only Two - The Friend I've Wept And The Maid I Woo.

Imagination That Compares And Contrasts With What Is Around As Well As What Is Better And Worse Is The Living Power And Prime Agent Of All Human Perception Judgement And Emotional Reaction.

I Am Never Very Forward In Offering Spiritual Consolation To Any One In Distress Or Disease. I Believe That Such Resources, To Be Of Any Service, Must Be Self-evolved In The First Instance. I Am Something Of The Quaker's Mind In This, And Am Inclined To Wait For The Spirit.

Dryden 's Genius Was Of That Sort Which Catches Fire By Its Own Motion; His Chariot Wheels Get Hot By Driving Fast.

I Do Not Call The Sod Under My Feet My Country; But Language-religion-government-blood-identity In These Makes Men Of One Country.

I Know The Bible Is Inspired Because It Finds Me At Greater Depths Of My Being Than Any Other Book.

Iambics March From Short To Long;-- With A Leap And A Bound The Swift Anapaests Throng

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.

A Mother Is A Mother Still, The Holiest Thing Alive.

The Genius Of The Spanish People Is Exquisitely Subtle, Without Being At All Acute; Hence There Is So Much Humour And So Little Wit In Their Literature.

A Man's As Old As He's Feeling. A Woman As Old As She Looks.

It Would Not Be Correct To Say That Every Moral Obligation Involves A Legal Duty; But Every Legal Duty Is Founded On A Moral Obligation.

Fear Gives Sudden Instincts Of Skill.

Show Me One Couple Unhappy Merely On Account Of Their Limited Circumstances, And I Will Show You Ten Who Are Wretched From Other Causes.

O Lady! We Receive But What We Give And In Our Life Alone Does Nature Live.

You May Depend Upon It, Religion Is, In Its Essence, The Most Gentlemanly Thing In The World. It Will Alone Gentilize, If Unmixed With Cant; And I Know Nothing Else That Will, Alone. Certainly Not The Army, Which Is Thought To Be The Grand Embellisher Of Manners.

Summer Has Set In With Its Usual Severity.

A Man's Desire Is For The Woman, But The Woman's Desire Is Rarely Other Than For The Desire Of The Man.

A Rogue Is A Roundabout Fool.

Friends Should Be Weighed, Not Told; Who Boasts To Have Won A Multitude Of Friends Has Never Had One.

How Wonderfully Beautiful Is The Delineation Of The Characters Of The Three Patriarchs In Genesis! To Be Sure If Ever Man Could, Without Impropriety, Be Called, Or Supposed To Be, "the Friend Of God," Abraham Was That Man. We Are Not Surprised That Abimelech And Ephron Seem To Reverence Him So Profoundly. He Was Peaceful, Because Of His Conscious Relation To God.

Men Of Genius Are Rarely Much Annoyed By The Company Of Vulgar People.

During The Act Of Knowledge Itself, The Objective And Subjective Are So Instantly United, That We Cannot Determine To Which Of The Two The Priority Belongs.

All Thoughts, All Passions, All Delights Whatever Stirs This Mortal Frame All Are But Ministers Of Love And Feed His Sacred Flame.

In Xanadu Did Kubla Khan A Stately Pleasure-dome Decree: Where Alph, The Sacred River, Ran Through Caverns Measureless To Man Down To A Sunless Sea.

There Is Small Chance Of Truth At The Goal, Where There Is Not Childlike Humility At The Starting-post.

Shakespeare Knew The Human Mind, And Its Most Minute And Intimate Workings, And He Never Introduces A Word, Or A Thought, In Vain Or Out Of Place; If We Do Not Understand Him, It Is Our Own Fault.

When The Whole And The Parts Are Seen At Once, As Mutually Producing And Explaining Each Other, As Unity In Multeity, There Results Shapeliness.

Day After Day, Day After Day, We Stuck, Nor Breath Nor Motion; As Idle As A Painted Ship Upon A Painted Ocean.

The Primary Imagination I Hold To Be The Living Power And Prime Agent Of All Human Perception, And As A Repetition In The Finite Mind Of The Eternal Act Of Creation In The Infinite I Am.

That Saints Will Aid If Men Will Call; For The Blue Sky Bends Over All!

The Reformation In The Sixteenth Century Narrowed Reform. As Soon As Men Began To Call Themselves Names, All Hope Of Further Amendment Was Lost.

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.

As A Man Without Forethought Scarcely Deserves The Name Of A Man, So Forethought Without Reflection Is But A Metaphorical Phrase For The Instinct Of A Beast.

Novels Are To Love As Fairy Tales To Dreams.

And Looking To The Heaven, That Bends Above You, How Oft! I Bless The Lot, That Made Me Love You.

The Primary Notion I Hold To Be The Living Power.

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.

Sublimity Is Hebrew By Birth.

Milton Has Carefully Marked In His Satan The Intense Selfishness, The Alcohol Of Egotism, Which Would Rather Reign In Hell Than Serve In Heaven.

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.

We Should Manage Our Thoughts As Shepherds Do Their Flowers In Making A Garland: First, Select The Choicest, And Then Dispose Them In The Most Proper Places, That Every One May Reflect A Part Of Its Color And Brightness On The Next.

Carved With Figures Strange And Sweet, All Made Out Of The Carver's Brain.

With No Other Privilege Than That Of Sympathy And Sincere Good Wishes, I Would Address An Affectionate Exhortation To The Youthful Literati, Grounded On My Own Experience. It Will Be But Short; For The Beginning, Middle, And End Converge To One Charge: Never Pursue Literature As A Trade.

Beginning Middle And End

Truths ... Are Too Often Considered As So True, That They Lose All The Power Of Truth, And Lie Bed-ridden In The Dormitory Of The Soul, Side By Side With The Most Despised And Exploded Errors.

No Man Was Ever Yet A Great Poet, Without Being At The Same Time A Profound Philosopher.

To All New Truths, Or Renovation Of Old Truths, It Must Be As In The Ark Between The Destroyed And The About-to-be Renovated World. The Raven Must Be Sent Out Before The Dove, And Ominous Controversy Must Precede Peace And The Olive Wreath.

Great Old Books Of The Great Old Authors Are Not In Everybody's Reach; And Though It Is Better To Know Them Thoroughly Than To Know Them Only Here And There, Yet It Is A Good Work To Give A Little To Those Who Have Neither Time Nor Means To Get His Own Belief.

And All Who Heard Should See Them There, And All Should Cry, Beware! Beware! His Flashing Eyes, His Floating Hair! Weave A Circle Round Him Thrice, And Close Your Eyes With Holy Dread, For He On Honey-dew Hath Fed, And Drunk The Milk Of Paradise.

Never To See Or Describe Any Interesting Appearance In Nature, Without Connecting It By Dim Analogies With The Moral World, Proves Faintness Of Impression. Nature Has Her Proper Interest; & He Will Know What It Is, Who Believes & Feels, That Every Thing Has A Life Of It's Own, & That We Are All One Life.

Metaphysics,--the Science Which Determines What Can And What Cannot Be Known Of Being And The Laws Of Being.

The River Rhine, It Is Well Known, Doth Wash Your City Of Cologne; But Tell Me, Nymphs! What Power Divine Shall Henceforth Wash The River Rhine?

The Whole Faculties Of Man Must Be Exerted In Order To Call Forth Noble Energies; And He Who Is Not Earnestly Sincere Lives In But Half His Being, Self-mutilated, Self-paralyzed.

The Form Of Truth Will Bear Exposure, As Well As That Of Beauty Herself.

A Religion, That Is, A True Religion, Must Consist Of Ideas And Facts Both; Not Of Ideas Alone Without Facts, For Then It Would Be Mere Philosophy; - Nor Of Facts Alone Without Ideas, Of Which Those Facts Are Symbols, Or Out Of Which They Arise, Or Upon Which They Are Grounded: For Then It Would Be Mere History.

Facts Are Not Truths; They Are Not Conclusions; They Are Not Even Premises, But In The Nature And Parts Of Premises.

Remorse Weeps Tears Of Blood.

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.

In Many Ways Doth The Full Heart Reveal The Presence Of The Love It Would Conceal.

Ignorance Seldom Vaults Into Knowledge, But Passes Into It Through An Intermediate State Of Obscurity, Even As Night Into Day Through Twilight.

Women Have Their Heads In Their Hearts. Man Seems To Have Been Destined For A Superior Being; As Things Are, I Think Women Generally Better Creatures Than Men. They Have Weaker Appetites And Weaker Intellects But Much Stronger Affections. A Man With A Bad Heart Has Been Sometimes Saved By A Strong Head; But A Corrupt Woman Is Lost Forever.

I Have Often Been Surprised That Mathematics, The Quintessence Of Truth, Should Have Found Admirers So Few And So Languid. Frequent Consideration And Minute Scrutiny Have At Length Unravelled The Cause: Viz . That Though Reason Is Feasted, Imagination Is Starved; Whilst Reason Is Luxuriating In Its Proper Paradise, Imagination Is Wearily Travelling On A Dreary Desert.

I Believe That Obstinacy, Or The Dread Of Control And Discipline, Arises Not So Much From Self-willedness As From A Conscious Defect Of Voluntary Power; As Foolhardiness Is Not Seldom The Disguise Of Conscious Timidity.

A Wild Rose Roofs The Ruined Shed, And That And Summer Well Agree.

To Most Men Experience Is Like The Stern Lights Of A Ship, Which Illuminate Only The Track It Has Passed.

For More Than A Thousand Years The Bible, Collectively Taken, Has Gone Hand In Hand With Civilization Science, Law; In Short, With The Moral And Intellectual Cultivation Of The Species, Always Supporting And Often Leading He Way.

Silence Does Not Always Mark Wisdom.

He Went Like One That Hath Been Stunn'd, And Is Of Sense Forlorn: A Sadder And A Wiser Man He Rose The Morrow Morn.

I May Not Hope From Outward Forms To Win / The Passion And The Life, Whose Fountains Are Within.

I Feel As If God Had, By Giving The Sabbath, Given Fifty-two Springs In Every Year.

Wherever You Find A Sentence Musically Worded, Of True Rhythm And Melody In The Words, There Is Something Deep And Good In The Meaning Too.

A Nation To Be Great Ought To Be Compressed In Its Increment By Nations More Civilized Than Itself.

In The Deepest Night Of Trouble And Sorrow God Gives Us So Much To Be Thankful For That We Need Never Cease Our Singing. With All Our Wisdom And Foresight We Can Take A Lesson In Gladness And Gratitude From The Happy Bird That Sings All Night, As If The Day Were Not Long Enough To Tell Its Joy.

Often Do The Spirits Stride On Before The Event; And In Today Already Walks Tomorrow.

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.

Pedantry Consists In The Use Of Words Unsuitable To The Time, Place, And Company.

Poetry Is Not The Proper Antithesis To Prose, But To Science. Poetry Is Opposed To Science, And Prose To Meter. The Proper And Immediate Object Of Science Is The Acquirement, Or Communication Of Truth; The Proper And Immediate Object Of Poetry Is The Communication Of Immediate Pleasure.

Prose And Poetry

And What If All Of Animated Nature Be But Organic Harps Diversely Framed, That Tremble Into Thought, As O'er Them Sweeps, Plastic And Vast, One Intellectual Breeze, At Once The Soul Of Each, And God Of All?

The Most Happy Marriage I Can Picture Or Imagine To Myself Would Be The Union Of A Deaf Man To A Blind Woman.

But Metre Itself Implies A Passion , I.e. A State Of Excitement, Both In The Poet's Mind, & Is Expected In That Of The Reader.

Water, Water, Everywhere, And All The Boards Did Shrink; Water, Water, Everywhere, Nor Any Drop To Drink.

The Artist Must Imitate That Which Is Within The Thing, That Which Is Active Through Form And Figure, And Discourses To Us By Symbols.

I Stood In Unimaginable Trance And Agony That Cannot Be Remembered.

Greatness And Goodness Are Not Means, But Ends.

That Only Can With Propriety Be Styled Refinement Which, By Strengthening The Intellect, Purifies The Manners.

I Love Being Superior To Myself Better Than [to] My Equals.

We Must Not Be Guilty Of Taking The Law Into Our Own Hands, And Converting It From What It Really Is To What We Think It Ought To Be.

The Spirit Of Poetry, Like All Other Living Powers, Must Of Necessity Circumscribe Itself By Rules, Were It Only To Unite Power With Beauty.

The Juggle Of Sophistry Consists, For The Most Part, In Using A Word In One Sense In All The Premises, And In Another Sense In The Conclusion.

It Is Saying Less Than The Truth To Affirm That An Excellent Book (and The Remark Holds Almost Equally Good Of A Raphael As Of A Milton) Is Like A Well-chosen And Well-tended Fruit Tree. Its Fruits Are Not Of One Season Only. With The Due And Natural Intervals, We May Recur To It Year After Year, And It Will Supply The Same Nourishment And The Same Gratification, If Only We Ourselves Return To It With The Same Healthful Appetite.

The Fair Breeze Blew, The White Foam Flew, And The Forrow Followed Free. We Were The First To Ever Burst Into The Silent Sea.

It Is A Flat'ning Thought, That The More We Have Seen, The Less We Have To Say.

A Man Of Maxims Only Is Like A Cyclops With One Eye, And That In The Back Of His Head.

Every Reform, However Necessary, Will By Weak Minds Be Carried To An Excess, That Itself Will Need Reforming.

For Compassion A Human Heart Suffices, But For Full And Adequate Sympathy, With Joy, An Angel's Only.

Joy Rises In Me, Like A Summer's Morn.

Conscience Is The Pulse Of Reason

O It Is Pleasant, With A Heart At Ease, Just After Sunset, Or By Moonlight Skies, To Make The Shifting Clouds Be What You Please.

The Many Men, So Beautiful! And They All Dead Did Lie: And A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things Lived On; And So Did I.

To Admire On Principle Is The Only Way To Imitate Without Loss Of Originality.

The Faults Of Great Authors Are Generally Excellences Carried To An Excess.

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.

Laughter Is Equally The Expression Of Extreme Anguish And Horror As Of Joy: As There Are Tears Of Sorrow And Tears Of Joy, So Is There A Laugh Of Terror And A Laugh Of Merriment.

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.

The Man Hath Penance Done, And Penance More Will Do.

I Must Reject Fluids And Ethers Of All Kinds, Magnetical, Electrical, And Universal, To Whatever Quintessential Thinness They May Be Treble Distilled, And As It Were Super-substantiated.

The Earth With Its Scarred Face Is The Symbol Of The Past; The Air And Heaven, Of Futurity.

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.

...from The Time Of Kepler To That Of Newton, And From Newton To Hartley, Not Only All Things In External Nature, But The Subtlest Mysteries Of Life And Organization, And Even Of The Intellect And Moral Being, Were Conjured Within The Magic Circle Of Mathematical Formulae.

The Fastidious Taste Will Find Offence In The Occasional Vulgarisms, Or What We Now Call Slang, Which Not A Few Of Our Writers Seem To Have Affected.

What Is An Epigram? A Dwarfish Whole, Its Body Brevity, And Wit Its Soul.

Heart-chilling Superstition! Thou Canst Glaze Even Pity's Eye With Her Own Frozen Tear.

An Instinctive Taste Teaches Men To Build Their Churches With Spire Steeples Which Point As With A Silent Finger To The Sky And Stars.

Some Men Are Like Musical Glasses; To Produce Their Finest Tones You Must Keep Them Wet.

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.

Men Of Humor Are Always In Some Degree Men Of Genius; Wits Are Rarely So, Although A Man Of Genius May, Amongst Other Gifts, Possess Wit, As Shakespeare.

He Is The Best Physician Who Is The Most Ingenious Inspirer Of Hope.

Poetry, Even That Of The Loftiest, And Seemingly, That Of The Wildest Odes, [has] A Logic Of Its Own As Severe As That Of Science; And More Difficult, Because More Subtle, More Complex, And Dependent On More And More Fugitive Causes. In The Truly Great Poets... There Is A Reason Assignable, Not Only For Every Word, But For The Position Of Every Word.

The Poet Is The Man Made To Solve The Riddle Of The Universe Who Brings The Whole Soul Of Man Into Activity.

To Know, To Esteem, To Love,-and Then To Part, Makes Up Life's Tale To Many A Feeling Heart.

Life Went A-maying With Nature, Hope, And Poesy, When I Was Young!

No Sound Is Dissonant Which Tells Of Life.

Never Yet Did There Exist A Full Faith In The Divine Word (by Whom Light As Well As Immortality Was Brought Into The World) Which Did Not Expand The Intellect, While It Purified The Heart--which Did Not Multiply The Aims And Objects Of The Understanding, While It Fixed And Simplified Those Of The Desires And Passions.

Oh Worse Than Everything, Is Kindness Counterfeiting Absent Love.

Love Is The Admiration And Cherishing Of The Amiable Qualities Of The Beloved Person, Upon The Condition Of Yourself Being The Object Of Their Action.

I Understood That You Would Take The Human Race In The Concrete, Have Exploded The Absurd Notion Of Pope's Essay On Man, [erasmus] Darwin, And All The Countless Believers-even (strange To Say) Among Xtians-of Man's Having Progressed From An Ouran Outang State-so Contrary To All History, To All Religion, Nay, To All Possibility-to Have Affirmed A Fall In Some Sense.

Enlist The Interests Of Stern Morality And Religious Enthusiasm In The Cause Of Political Liberty, As In The Time Of The Old Puritans, And It Will Be Irresistible.

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.

Centres, Or Centre-pieces Of Wood, Are Put By Builders Under An Arch Of Stone While It Is In The Process Of Construction Till The Keystone Is Put In. Just Such Is The Use Satan Makes Of Pleasures To Construct Evil Habits Upon; The Pleasure Lasts Till The Habit Is Fully Formed; But That Done The Habit May Stand Eternal. The Pleasures Are Sent For Firewood, And The Hell Begins In This Life.

Imagination Is The Living Power And Prime Agent Of All Human Perception.

Call Not That Man Wretched, Who Whatever Else He Suffers As To Pain Inflicted, Or Pleasure Denied, Has A Child For Whom He Hopes And On Whom He Doats.

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.

Courage Multiplies The Chances Of Success By Sometimes Making Opportunities, And Always Availing Itself Of Them; And In This Sense Fortune May Be Said To Favor Fools By Those Who, However Prudent In Their Opinion, Are Deficient In Valor And Enterprise.

Contempt Is Egotism In Ill- Humor.

The Imagination ... That Reconciling And Mediatory Power, Which Incorporating The Reason In Images Of The Sense And Organizing (as It Were) The Flux Of The Senses By The Permanence And Self-circling Energies Of The Reason, Gives Birth To A System Of Symbols, Harmonious In Themselves, And Consubstantial With The Truths Of Which They Are The Conductors.

There Are Three Classes Into Which All The Women Past Seventy That Ever I Knew Were To Be Divided: 1. That Dear Old Soul; 2. That Old Woman; 3. That Old Witch.

I Have Often Thought What A Melancholy World This Would Be Without Children, And What An Inhuman World Without The Aged.

Forth From His Dark And Lonely Hiding-place, (portentous Sight!) The Owlet Atheism, Sailing On Obscene Wings Athwart The Noon, Drops His Blue-fringed Lids, And Holds Them Close, And Hooting At The Glorious Sun In Heaven, Cries Out, ''where Is It?''

Experience Informs Us That The First Defence Of Weak Minds Is To Recriminate.

The Author Of Biographia Literaria Was Already A Ruined Man. Sometimes, However, To Be A "ruined Man" Is Itself A Vocation.

Happiness Can Be Built Only On Virtue, And Must Of Necessity Have Truth For Its Foundation.

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.

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.

In Your Intercourse With Sects, The Sublime And Abstruse Doctrines Of Christian Belief Belong To The Church; But The Faith Of The Individual, Centred In His Heart, Is, Or May Be, Collateral To Them. Faith Is Subjective.

The First Duty Of A Wise Advocate Is To Convince His Opponents That He Understands Their Arguments, And Sympathies With Their Just Feelings.

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.

The Eighth Commandment Was Not Made For Bards.

Poetry: The Best Words In The Best Order.

Greatness And Goodness Are Not Means, But Ends! Hath He Not Always Treasures, Always Friends, The Good Great Man? Three Treasures, Love And Light, And Calm Thoughts, Regular As Infants' Breath; And Three Firm Friends, More Sure Than Day And Night, Himself, His Maker, And The Angel Death.

For She Belike Hath Drunken Deep Of All The Blessedness Of Sleep.

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.

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.

Come, Come Thou Bleak December Wind, And Blow The Dry Leaves From The Tree! Flash, Like A Love-thought, Thro'me, Death And Take A Life That Wearies Me.

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.

People Of Humor Are Always In Some Degree People Of Genius.

Force Yourself To Reflect On What You Read, Paragraph By Paragraph.

Is Duty A Mere Sport, Or An Employ! Life An Entrusted Talent Or A Toy!

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.

Flowers Are Lovely; Love Is Flower-like; Friendship Is A Sheltering Tree; Oh The Joys That Came Down Shower-like, Of Friendship, Love, And Liberty, Ere I Was Old!

Men, I Still Think, Ought To Be Weighed Not Counted.

Nor Dim Nor Red, Like God's Own Head, The Glorious Sun Uprist

Man Is Distinguished From The Brute Animals In Proportion As Thought Prevails Over Sense: But In The Healthy Processes Of The Mind, A Balance Is Constantly Maintained Between The Impressions From Outward Objects And The Inward Operations Of The Intellect:--for If There Be An Overbalance In The Contemplative Faculty, Man Thereby Becomes The Creature Of Mere Meditation, And Loses His Natural Power Of Action.

About, About, In Reel And Rout The Death Fires Danced At Night.

We Are Now Courts Of Equity, And Must Decide The Thing According To All The Rights.

There Are Errors Which No Wise Man Will Treat With Rudeness While There Is A Probability That They May Be The Refraction Of Some Great Truth Still Below The Horizon.

Hence, Viper Thoughts, That Coil Around My Mind,reality's Dark Dream!i Turn From You, And Listen To The Wind,which Long Has Raved Unnoticed.

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.

Ancestral Voices Prophesying War.

I Have Seen Great Intolerance Shown In Support Of Tolerance.

To Be Beloved Is All I Need, And Whom I Love, I Love Indeed.

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.

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.

It Is The Duty Of The Judge In Criminal Trials To Take Care That The Verdict Of The Jury Is Not Founded Upon Any Evidence Except That Which The Law Allows.

I Must Lay Down The Law As I Understand It, And As I Read It In Books Of Authority.

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