Samuel Taylor Quotes
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.
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
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.
The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.
Religion is the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It alone will gentilize, if unmixed with cant.
Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face.
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.
Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight.
The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.
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.
Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.
An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches with spire steeples which point as with a silent finger to the sky and stars.
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung.
What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if,when you awoke,you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.
Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.
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.
The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that every Thing has a Life of its own, and that we are all one Life.
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.
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 first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers.
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.
Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.
Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.
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.
How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an autumnal day!
