Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes about Imagination

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Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.

Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Imagination, Perception, Agents

Biographia Literaria ch. 13 (1817)

The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Beautiful, Sight, Imagination

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1880). “Miscellanies, æsthetic and literary: to which is added The theory of life, collected and arranged by T. Ashe”

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses , each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Men, Names, Imagination

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, May Byron, William Hazlitt, James Gillman (2015). “Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Man Behind The Lyrics (Illustrated Edition): Autobiographical Works (Memoirs, Complete Letters, Literary Introspection, Thoughts and Notes on Poetry); Including Extensive Biographies and Studies on S. T. Coleridge”, p.125, e-artnow

The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Imagination, Mind, Perception

Biographia Literaria ch. 13 (1817)

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Communication, Plain Language, Imagination

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2001). “On the Constitution of the Church and State”, p.326, Classic Books Company

The imagination ... that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Self, Imagination, Giving

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Engell, Walter Jackson Bate (1984). “Biographia Literaria, Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions”, p.156, Princeton University Press

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Memories, Writing, Imagination

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the table talk”, p.136

Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Imagination, Intellectual, Energy

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1854). “The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions”, p.481

I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz . that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Should Have, Imagination, Paradise

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2015). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria”, p.4115, e-artnow

Imagination that compares and contrasts with what is around as well as what is better and worse is the living power and prime agent of all human perception judgement and emotional reaction.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Gratitude, Emotional, Imagination

The primary notion i hold to be the Living Power.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Imagination, Notion, Primaries

But oh! each visitation Suspends what nature gave me any my birth, My shaping spirit of Imagination.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Imagination, Spirit, Birth

'Dejection: an Ode' (1802) st. 6.

Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Writing, Plain Language, Imagination

Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Intelligent, Imagination, Soul

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes about Imagination

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