Skip to content

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811)

Another quote →

More quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust;
His soul is with the saints, I trust.

In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal.

Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

Work without Hope (1825)

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
Of friendship, love, and liberty,
Ere I was old!

All Samuel Taylor Coleridge quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.