Thomas De Quincey Quotes

48 Sourced Quotes

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.

Thomas De Quincey
Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, what is that? It is that man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.

Thomas De Quincey
Thou only givest these gifts to man, and thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!

Thomas De Quincey
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.

Thomas De Quincey
Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.

Thomas De Quincey
In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

Thomas De Quincey
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.

Thomas De Quincey
Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

Thomas De Quincey
Oh! just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for "the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel," bringest an assuaging balm; eloquent opium!

Thomas De Quincey
So, then, Oxford Street, stonyhearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from thee.

Thomas De Quincey
The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.

Thomas De Quincey
The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.

Thomas De Quincey
A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.

Thomas De Quincey
Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities … will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual.

Thomas De Quincey
If a man "whose talk is of oxen" should become an opium-eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to dream at all)—he will dream about oxen.

Thomas De Quincey
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power.

Thomas De Quincey
It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.

Thomas De Quincey
Oxford Street, stony-hearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children.

Thomas De Quincey
Flowers…so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children—honored as the jewellery of God only by them.

Thomas De Quincey
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.

Thomas De Quincey
It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it.

Thomas De Quincey
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.

Thomas De Quincey
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.

Thomas De Quincey
All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.

Thomas De Quincey
Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated—everlasting farewells!

Thomas De Quincey