Coleridge on the Best Type of Advice

Today is the birthday of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the English poet (1772-1834) who wrote

Advice is like snow — the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.