Samuel Taylor Quotes

One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe.

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.

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.

In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere.

Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, The glorious Sun uprist

A maxim is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is merely speculative; a "principle" carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective.

I must lay down the law as I understand it, and as I read it in books of authority.

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.

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.

For compassion a human heart suffices, but for full and adequate sympathy, with joy, an angel's only.

We must follow the old authorities and precedents in criminal matters.

A Court has no right to strain the law because it causes hardship.

We are now Courts of equity, and must decide the thing according to all the rights.

Fellows of colleges in the universities are in one sense the recipients of alms, because they receive funds which originally were of an eleemosynary character.

We have to administer the law whether we like it or no.

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.

As long as we have to administer the law we must do so according to the law as it is. We are not here to make the law.

Conscience is the pulse of reason

He holds him with his glittering eye, And listens like a three years' child.

I have found words [in the Bible] for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and my feebleness.

A spring of love gush'd from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware.

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.

An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol.

How well he fell asleepl Like some proud river, widening toward the sea; Calmly and grandly, silently and deep, Life joined eternity.

Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases, which he does not choose to acknowledge openly with his own sign manual.

He saw a lawyer killing a viper on a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind of Cain and his brother Abel.

That saints will aid if men will call; For the blue sky bends over all!

If people could learn history, what lessons it might teach us!

For she belike hath drunken deep Of all the blessedness of sleep.

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.

And to be wroth with one we love…Doth work like madness in the brain.

The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation are, — 1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and 3. Hope to all.

Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.

And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you, How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.

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.

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.

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.

Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea! every thing that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, whereso'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty.

No sound is dissonant which tells of life.

Water cannot rise higher than its source, neither can human reason.

Ah why refuse the blameless bliss? Can danger lurk within a kiss?

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

Never pursue literature as a trade.

I stood in unimaginable trance And agony that cannot be remembered.

A wild rose roofs the ruined shed, And that and summer well agree.

The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It is awfully absurd to make a man invoke God's wrath upon himself, if he speaks false; it is, in my judgment, a sin to do so.

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.

O let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway.

Seldom can philosophic genius be more usefully employed than in thus rescuing admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.