quotes from classic

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.

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Rights! There are no rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look at the history of the growth of our constitution, and you will see that our ancestors never upon any occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves; you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man.

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There is no such thing as a worthless book though there are some far worse than worthless; no book that is not worth preserving, if its existence may be tolerated; as there may be some men whom it may be proper to hang, but none should be suffered to starve.

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Five miles meandering with mazy motion, Through dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank the tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

more quotes from Wendell Berry

The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

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I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

more quotes from Wendell Berry

We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?

more quotes from Wendell Berry

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

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I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods.

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Prose, words in their best order. Poetry, the best words in the best order.

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it -- low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion -- and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What is an epigram A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What comes from the heart goes to the heart.

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Carved with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain,

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The most happy marriage I can imagine to myselfwould be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

No Voice; but oh! the silence sank like music on my heart.

more quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge