"Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never."

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• "A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no ..."
• "A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks. "
• "A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as ..."
• "Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and ..."
• "All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness. "
• "All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers ..."
• "An orphan's curse would drag to hell, a spirit from on high; but oh! more ..."
• "And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility. "
• "And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in ..."
• "As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams ..."
• "As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes ..."
• "Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. "
• "Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself ..."
• "Friendship is a sheltering tree. "
• "General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree are ..."
• "Good and bad men are less than they seem. "
• "Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends. "
• "He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope. "
• "How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance! "
• "How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed ..."
• "I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance. "

• "I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; ..."
• "If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented ..."
• "In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure. "
• "Its body brevity, and wit its soul. "
• "My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the ..."
• "No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor. "
• "No one does anything from a single motive. "
• "Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm. "
• "O pure of heart! Thou needest not ask of me what this strong music in ..."
• "Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole. "
• "Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor. "
• "People of humor are always in some degree people of genius. "
• "Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from. "
• "Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face. "
• "Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They ..."
• "So for the mother's sake the child was dear, and dearer was the mother for ..."
• "Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them ..."
• "Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before ..."
• "Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. ..."
• "That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. "

• "The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten ..."
• "The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union ..."
• "The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government ..."
• "To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only ..."
• "To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning. "
• "To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to ..."
• "What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul. "
• "Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books ..."
• "Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they ..."