Ancient Mariner Quotes

#1. He has not yet become an elder statesman, though his foreign policy credentials are considerable, but he is certainly our ancient mariner, forever tugging at our sleeve to let him tell his tale of what really happened.

Ronald Steel

#2. Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. -
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.

Mary Shelley

#3. 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' had a formative effect on me. I think it's one of those works that if you encounter it very early you're doubly enchanted by the beauty of the language and the strangeness of the vision. It stays with you.

Ben Okri

#4. I am all the time talking about you, and bragging, to one person or another. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had a tale in his heart he must unfold to all. I am always buttonholing somebody and saying, "Someday you must meet my mother."

Edna St. Vincent Millay

#5. Even the ancient mariner, with his wonderful tale, succeeded in stopping only one of three! No book is for everybody.

Leon Garfield

#6. The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

Samuel Butler

#7. It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland.

James Russell Lowell

#8. The Ancient Mariner seizes the guest at the wedding feast and will not let go until he has told all his story: the prototype of the bore.

Mason Cooley

#9. Don't be alarmed, Mr. Sturges. Some of my closest friends are dead.

Seth Grahame-Smith

#10. As the ancient Greeks replaced myth-based explanations with mechanistic models of the Solar System, their emphasis shifted from asking why to asking how.

Max Tegmark

#11. I can't nap when you're talking. And I need my naptime. If not, I'll end up driving off the road on the way to the airport tomorrow.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#12. Life isn't our possession, something we own. We're alive as we receive life from God, as the gift of his grace and mercy.

John Webster

#13. If you have a great message but no great way to entertain, people won't want to hear it.

Jonny Diaz

#14. It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb and said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

#15. Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.

Matthew Desmond