Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

7th Tuesday after Trinity

I have a mind to draw a complete character of a worldly-wise man . . . He would be highly-finished, useful, honoured, popular—a man revered by his children his wife, and so forth.  To be sure, he must not expect to be beloved by one proto-friend [best friend], and, if there be truth or reason in Christianity, he will go to hell—but, even so, he will doubtless secure himself a most respectable place in the devil's chimney-corner.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Table Talk.

  The best, the truly lovely in each and all, is God.  Therefore the truly beloved is the symbol of God to whomever it is truly beloved by, but it may become perfect and maintained love by the function of the two.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Anima Poetae.

  God is the essence as well as the object of religion.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Anima Poetae.

  Nec mihi, Christe, tua sufficiunt sine te, nec tibi placent mea sine me [neither are thine sufficient to me without thee, O Christ, nor do mine please thee without me] exclaims St. Bernard.  This single epigram is worth (shall I say—O far rather—is a sufficient antidote to) a waggon-load of . . . philosophies.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Anima Poetae.

5th Friday of Lent

God is the essence as well as the object of religion.

Coleridge: Anima Poetae.

  I have a mind to draw a complete character of a worldly-wise man. . . . He would be highly-finished, useful, honoured, popular—a man revered by his children, his wife, and so forth.  To be sure, he must not expect to be beloved by one proto-friend; and if there be truth in reason or Christianity, he will go to hell.

S. T. Coleridge: Anima Poetae.

  What must we do let us love to do.  It is a noble chemistry that turns necessity into pleasure.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Anima Poetae.

  Hypocrisy, the deadly crime which, like Judas, kisses Hell at the lips of redemption.

S. T. Coleridge: Anima Poetae.

  What comfort in the silent eye upraised to God!  'Thou knowest.'  O what a thought!  Never to be friendless, never to be unintelligible!  The omnipresence has been generally represented as a spy. . . . O to feel what the pain is to be utterly unintelligible and then—'O God, thou understandest!'

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Anima Poetae.