Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1772 – 1834 CE

One of the most influential English poets, co-founder of the Romantic Movement, prominent philosopher, gothic pioneer and leviathan impact on Mary Shelley, William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, Emerson and American transcendentalism; Coleridge paid for his renown with poor health, depression, bipolar disorder, and a lifetime of opium addiction. Rescuing Shakespeare’s play Hamlet from denigration by critics, he established his reputation as aliterary critic. The instigator of "Conversational Poetry,” using common, everyday language to convey deep images and wisdom, he coined many still-used words like soulmate, selfless, pessimism, relativity, narcissism, actualize, and intensify

Eras

Sources

Kubla Khan

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Unlisted Sources

Biographia Literaria, 1817

Converstions and Reflections, 1836

Letter to Shomas Poole

Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Notebooks

Table Talk (1824)​

Table Talk, 1827

Quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (25 quotes)

“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

from Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Themes: Water

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“He prayeth best, who loveth best all things both great and small”

from Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Chapters: 3. Weak Wishes, Strong Bones

Themes: Appreciation

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“We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.”

from Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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“A sadder and a wiser man he rose the morrow morn.”

from Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Themes: Wisdom

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

Chapters: 17. True Leaders

Themes: Less is More

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“Our own heart, and not other men's opinions, forms our true honor.”

Chapters: 13. Honor and Disgrace

Themes: Integrity

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“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.”

Chapters: 60. Less is More

Themes: Less is More

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“I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance.”

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

Themes: Paradox

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“what begins in fear usually ends in folly”

Chapters: 31. Victory Funeral

Themes: Fear

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“What comes from the heart goes to the heart”

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“And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

from Kubla Khan

Chapters: 72. Helpful Fear

Themes: Sacred World

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“Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, then reached the caverns measureless to man”

from Kubla Khan

Chapters: 6. The Source

Themes: Emptiness

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“the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.”

Themes: History

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“Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.”

Themes: Books

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“Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.”

Themes: Inspiration

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“The poet brings the whole soul of a man into activity, diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends each into each by that magical power we call imagination.”

from Biographia Literaria, 1817

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“The man that has no music in his soul can indeed never be a genuine poet.”

from Biographia Literaria, 1817

Themes: Music

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“Whenever philosophy has taken religion into its plan, it has ended in skepticism; and whenever religion excludes philosophy or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to wilful blindness and superstition.”

from Converstions and Reflections, 1836

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“He who begins by loving Christianity better than the truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all.”

from Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Themes: Christianity

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“All truth is a species of revelation.”

from Letter to Shomas Poole

Themes: Truth

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“The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.”

from Table Talk, 1827

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“Marriage has no natural relation to love. Marriage belongs to society; it is a social contract.”

from Table Talk, 1827

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“He looked at his Soul with a Telescope. What seemed all irregular, he saw and showed to be beautiful Constellations; and he added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds.”

from Notebooks

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“If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

from Table Talk (1824)​

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“poetry—the best words in their best order”

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Quotes about Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1 quotes)

“Especially in his twenties—before he was consumed by opium—Coleridge's greatest addiction was the natural world of mountains and valleys, woods and seas... Writer's such as Coleridge and Goethe not only created poetry our of the awe-inspiring sublime in nature; both of them also had a strong scientific bent.”

Roman Krznaric 1
Practical, popular, modern philosopher

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

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