Thomas de Quincey Quotes

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  • Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.

    Sun   Spectacles  
    Thomas De Quincey (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas De Quincey (Illustrated)”, p.159, Delphi Classics
  • Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

    Thomas De Quincey, Robert Morrison (2013). “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings”, p.39, Oxford University Press
  • The pulpit style of Germany has been always rustically negligent, or bristling with pedantry.

    Style   Germany   Pulpit  
  • Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.

    Class   Two   Age  
    Thomas De Quincey (1873). “The Works of Thomas De Quincey, "The English Opium Eater": Including All His Contributions to Periodical Literature”, p.237
  • It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them.

  • Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to amuse. Indeed! A true antithesis to knowledge, in this case, is not pleasure, but power. All that is literature seeks to communicate power; all that is not literature, to communicate knowledge.

    'Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected' no. 3, in the 'London Magazine' January-July 1823. De Quincey adds that he is indebted for this distinction to 'many years' conversation with Mr Wordsworth'
  • I feel that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible.

    Memories   Forget   Feels  
    Thomas De Quincey (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas De Quincey (Illustrated)”, p.265, Delphi Classics
  • It is an impressive truth that sometimes in the very lowest forms of duty, less than which would rank a man as a villain, there is, nevertheless the sublimest ascent of self-sacrifice. To do less would class you as an object of eternal scorn, to do so much presumes the grandeur of heroism.

    Sacrifice   Men   Self  
    Thomas De Quincey (1854). “De Quincey's works”, p.125
  • But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

    Thomas De Quincey (2009). “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater: Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar”, p.107, The Floating Press
  • Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.

    Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1859). “De Quincey's Writings: Historical and critical essays. 1853”, p.278
  • I stood checked for a moment - awe, not fear, fell upon me - and whist I stood, a solemn wind began to blow, the most mournful that ever ear heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries.

    Blow   Wind   Ears  
    Thomas De Quincey (1852). “Confessions of an English Opium-eater: And Suspiria de Profundis”, p.175
  • A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life.

    Memories   Angel   Men  
    Thomas De Quincey (1892). “Joan of Arc: And Other Selections from Thomas De Quincey. Joan of Arc. The English mail coach (abridged).. Levana and our ladies of sorrow. Dinner, real and reputed (abridged).. I.. II.. III.. IV.”
  • Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them; and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures.

    Thomas De Quincey (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas De Quincey (Illustrated)”, p.168, Delphi Classics
  • Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.

    Perfect   May   States  
    Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1851). “De Quincey's Writings: Miscellaneous essays. 1851”, p.22
  • Many a man has risen to eminence under the powerful reaction of his mind in fierce counter-agency to the scorn of the unworthy, daily evoked by his personal defects, who with a handsome person would have sunk into the luxury of a careless life under the tranquillizing smiles of continual admiration.

    Powerful   Men   Luxury  
    Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1854). “De Quincey's Writings: Essays on philosophical writers and other men of letters. 1854-60. [v. 14 stereotyped”, p.142
  • No progressive knowledge will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless power given to words of a certain import.

    Thomas De Quincey (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas De Quincey (Illustrated)”, p.4128, Delphi Classics
  • No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.

    Men   Solitude   Doe  
    Thomas De Quincey (1871). “The Works of Thomas De Quincey: Suspira de profundis. General index”, p.3
  • Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

    Music   Single   Men  
    Thomas De Quincey (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas De Quincey (Illustrated)”, p.1549, Delphi Classics
  • All is finite in the present; and even that finite is infinite in it velocity of flight towards death. But in God there is nothing finite...Upon a night of earthquake he builds a thousand years of pleasant habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an infant he raises oftentimes from human intellects glorious vintages that could not else have been.

    Night   Men   Years  
  • The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.

    Girl   Laughter   Sound  
    Thomas De Quincey (1853). “De Quincey's works”, p.85
  • The peace of nature and of the innocent creatures of god seems to be secure and deep, only so long as the presence of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are not there to trouble its sanctity.

    Peace   Nature   Men  
    Thomas De Quincey (2016). “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater”, p.12, Open Road Media
  • All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.

    Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1854). “De Quincey's Writings: Essays on philosophical writers and other men of letters. 1854-60. [v. 14 stereotyped”, p.103
  • As is the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius.

    Art   Father   Philosophy  
    Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1851). “De Quincey's Writings: Miscellaneous essays. 1851”, p.24
  • It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.

    'Confessions of an English Opium Eater' (1822) pt. 2 'The Pleasures of Opium'
  • All that is literature seeks to communicate power

    'Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected' no. 3, in the 'London Magazine' January-July 1823. De Quincey adds that he is indebted for this distinction to 'many years' conversation with Mr Wordsworth'
  • All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

    Men   Solitude   World  
  • Far better, and more cheerfully, I could dispense with some part of the downright necessaries of life, than with certain circumstances of elegance and propriety in the daily habits of using them.

    Thomas De Quincey, James Thomas Fields (1851). “De Quincey's Writings: Life and manners; from The autobiography of an English opium-eater. 1851”, p.14
  • Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.

    Autograph letter from De Quincey addressed to J.A. Hessey, December 3, 1823.
  • In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

    Wife   Carriages   Walks  
    Thomas De Quincey (1867). “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. And analects from John Paul Richter ... New edition”, p.23
  • It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it.

    Thomas De Quincey (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas De Quincey (Illustrated)”, p.116, Delphi Classics
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Thomas de Quincey quotes about: Art Books Children Literature Memories Pleasure Solitude