Explore "William III and Genius" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
William the Third was a greater and much honester man than any of his / ministers. I believe every one of them, except Shrewsbury, has now been / detected in correspondence with James.
Berkeley can only be confuted, or answered, by one sentence. So it is with / Spinosa. His premiss granted, the deduction is a chain of adamant.
Genius may co-exist with wildness, idleness, folly, even with crime; but / not long, believe me, with selfishness, and the indulgence of an envious / disposition. Envy is *[Greek: kakistos kai dikaiotatos theos], as I once / saw it expressed somewhere in a page of Stobaeus: it dwarfs and withers its / worshippers.
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other / than for the desire of the man.[1]
[Footnote 1: / "A woman's friendship," I find written by Mr. C. on a page dyed red with an / imprisoned rose-leaf, "a woman's friendship borders more closely on love / than man's. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly / acts; whilst women ask fewer proofs, and more signs and expressions of / attachment. " -- ED.]