Top 380 Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Featured in: Poetry Quotes

2. “Poetry: the best words in the best order.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Featured in: Poetry Quotes

3. “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.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Featured in: Quotes About the Sea

4. “Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

5. “A great mind must be androgynous.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

6. “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.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Featured in: Smile Quotes

7. “Alone, Alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never saint took pity on My soul in agony.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

8. “What comes from the heart goes to the heart.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

9. “He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

10. “Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

11. “Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

12. “The history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

13. “He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

14. “Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

15. “That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

16. “And in today already walks tomorrow.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

17. “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.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

18. “Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

19. “Nature never deserts the wise and pure; no plot so narrow, be but nature there; no waste so vacant, but may well employ each faculty of sense, and keep the heart awake to love and beauty.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

20. “Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21. “He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

22. “Where true Love burns Desire is Love’s pure flame; It is the reflex of our earthly frame, That takes its meaning from the nobler part, And but translates the language of the heart.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

23. “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?”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

24. “I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

25. “Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Featured in: Quotes About Hope, Valentine's Day Quotes

26. “Little is taught by contest or dispute, everything by sympathy and love.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

27. “What is one man’s gain is another’s loss.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

28. “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.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

29. “Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

30. “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self?”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

31. “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!”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

32. “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.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

33. “My eyes make pictures when they are shut.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

34. “To be beloved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

35. “All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing, And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

36. “Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

37. “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.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

38. “There is one art of which people should be masters – the art of reflection.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

39. “Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

40. “Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

41. “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

42. “The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

43. “Milton had a highly imaginative, Cowley a very fanciful mind.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

44. “If people could learn history, what lessons it might teach us!”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

45. “O lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

46. “No sound is dissonant which tells of life.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

47. “Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

48. “The fair breeze blew, The white foam flew, And the forrow followed free. We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

49. “The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

50. “Swans sing before they die – ’twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge