Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Epigram." The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, William Pickering, 1828.
Although he was the first Western philosopher to emerge from the dark ages, he was one of the great advocates for freedom of speech and freedom of thought. He not only was publicly critical of many authority figures of the day, but he refused Pope Nicholas I’s orders to submit his work to Church censorship. He was supported by King Charles nonetheless, but various church councils condemned many of his writings. Ironically, one of his works that caused so much criticism was a defense of one of the views of Hincmar, the cleric who he attacked in the quotation. The radical notion was that the destiny of an individual is not totally dependent upon God, but that man has been given free will and that has some part in determining salvation.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including "suspension of disbelief". He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism.
