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
Famous quotes containing the words samuel taylor coleridge, taylor coleridge, samuel taylor, samuel, taylor and/or coleridge:
“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.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in
their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.
Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet,
with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel.
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!
Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.”
—Bible: Hebrew Second Samuel (l. I, 23–25)
“That, of course, was the thing about the fifties with all their patina of familial bliss: A lot of the memories were not happy, not mine, not my friends’. That’s probably why the myth so endures, because of the dissonance in our lives between what actually went on at home and what went on up there on those TV screens where we were allegedly seeing ourselves reflected back.”
—Anne Taylor Fleming (20th century)
“O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live:”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)