Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as for his major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. He coined many familiar words and phrases, including the celebrated suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence, via Emerson, on American transcendentalism.
Throughout his adult life, Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated by some that he suffered from bipolar disorder, a condition as yet unidentified during his lifetime. Coleridge suffered from poor health that may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these concerns with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.
Read more about Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Early Life, Poetry
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“This far outstripped the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind:
For he, alas! is blind!
O’er rough and smooth with even step he passed,
And knows not whether he be first or last.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones, you must keep them wet.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“...be men and fight.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 4:9.
“He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath his will.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Her skin was white as leprosy,
The nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)