If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is s — Table Talk (Coleridge)

"I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid drooping! The sympathy of the poet with the subjects of his poetry is particularly remarkable in Shakspeare and Chaucer; but what the first effects by a strong act of imagination and mental metamorphosis, the last does without any effort, merely by the inborn kindly joyousness of his nature. How well we seem to know Chaucer! How absolutely nothing do we know of Shakspeare!"

"Schiller has the material sublime."

"Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from, — as pickpockets are observed commonly to walk with their hands in their breeches pockets."

"I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in the best order."

"The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost."

"I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, which I fear has gone on for an hour without any stop at all."