Remarks by Hartley Coleridge | V2Melody Quotations

“This it is, that divides true imitative Art from mechanical Imitation.”

Distinguishing living artistic truth from mere surface copying · Undated letter to Mrs Henry Nelson Coleridge

Art
Truth

“The truest characters, the most vivid landscapes in the world of Art, have probably been evoked by actual flesh and blood, actual land, wood, rock, and water.”

Grounding artistic invention in transformed experience of real people and places · Undated letter to Mrs Henry Nelson Coleridge

“Procrastination borrows of Time at Compound Interest and at last can only compound at about a farthing in the pound.”

Turning delay into a witty image of mounting debt and diminishing returns · Letter to Thomas Blackburne, 1847

Humour
Time

“Babies and Kittens suffer more from love than from hatred.”

A comic warning about affection becoming overwhelming · Letter to Derwent Coleridge, 12 April 1845

“I believe few persons have a correct image of themselves in their imagination.”

Observing the difficulty of seeing oneself as others do · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 7 February 1844

“It is a great mistake to suppose that education is to supply the place of natural gifts, or that natural gifts could dispense with education.”

Presenting education and natural ability as necessary complements · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 15 May 1843

“My whole experience has convinced me that advice does more harm than good in the world.”

A sceptical judgement on the unintended damage caused by advice · Letter to Mrs Gillman, 9 December 1840

“I am not one who looks upon death as an infliction on those that die—but it is often a sore misfortune to those that survive.”

Shifting the burden of death from the departed to those left behind · Letter to the Revd Isaac Green, April 1838

“One by one, my old friends drop away, and though I want not well-wishers, nor active benefactors, I feel painfully how few are left of those who were bound to me by nature, or a parent’s memory.”

Mourning the gradual loss of relationships rooted in shared history · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 13 January 1838

“So difficult is it to recommence any work of imagination after any interval.”

Noting how creative continuity can be broken by even a period of interruption · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 13 January 1838

“I sometimes take a snooze after dinner, which saves time.”

A gently paradoxical defence of the restorative nap · Letter to Mrs Henry Nelson Coleridge, 7 September 1837

“There are more good books in any one language than life is long enough to master.”

A concise reminder that reading exceeds the limits of a lifetime · Letter to Mrs Henry Nelson Coleridge, 7 September 1837

Art
Time

“The very fact that the All good should have permitted such an intellect to fall into confusion, proves how little we ought to value ourselves on intellectual endowments, apart from our moral use of them.”

Placing moral use above intellectual brilliance as the true measure of worth · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6 November 1836

“I can give no comfort which his Christian mind will not better supply, and to attempt to divert, while the wound is young, is impertinent mockery.”

Rejecting shallow distraction as a response to fresh grief · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 21 August 1836

“There is, moreover, I am afraid, a jealousy in friendship as well as in love.”

Recognising possessiveness as a danger in friendship as well as romance · Letter to Henry Nelson Coleridge, 8 May 1836

“My father could not have written the Ancient Mariner at sixty, yet who will say that his Genius declined?”

Separating the changing expression of genius from any simple story of decline · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 18 January 1836

“It is a sad mistake in education to persuade young people that virtue will exempt them from suffering, or turn the world into a happy valley.”

Warning that moral education must not promise immunity from pain · Letter to Henry Nelson Coleridge, 11 January 1836

“Yet what more calm than death, and the reflections which death begets in a Christian Mind?”

Finding solemn calm in Christian reflection on death · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 4 August 1834

“I do not feel fatherless—I often find my mind disputing with itself—What would my Father think of this?”

Describing how an inward conversation can preserve a dead parent’s presence · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 4 August 1834

Death
Memory

“Would that I could but see you, talk to you, were it but for a single hour—O Derwent, we have sustained the greatest loss which Time or Death can ever inflict.”

Giving voice to fraternal grief after the death of their father · Letter to Derwent Coleridge, 1 August 1834

“You will agree with me that the truth is best in every possible emergency.”

Affirming honesty as the safest course even in painful circumstances · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 7 October 1833

Hope
Truth

“I do not, I dare not, I will not despair.”

A compact act of resistance against hopelessness · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 7 October 1833

Despair
Hope

“Literary employment agrees both with my mind and body, and I am happily free from that morbid anxiety about fame, which torments men far wiser than I.”

Finding health in literary work while resisting the torment of reputation · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 19 November 1832

“The truth is, that simplicity is a great gift, and the imitation of simplicity is the worst of affectation.”

Distinguishing genuine plainness from the artificial performance of it · Letter to W. Fell, 16 October 1832

Art
Truth

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