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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
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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.
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Thou only givest these gifts to man, and thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!
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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.
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Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.
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In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.
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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.
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Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.
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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!
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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.
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The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.
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The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
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A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.
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Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities … will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual.
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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.
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There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power.
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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.
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Oxford Street, stony-hearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children.
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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.
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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.
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It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it.
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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.
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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.
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All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.
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Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated—everlasting farewells!
Thomas De Quincey
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Quote of the day
Oh, God, why don't I remember that a little chaos is good for the soul?
Marilyn French
Thomas De Quincey
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Born:
August 15, 1785
Died:
December 8, 1859
(aged 74)
Bio:
Thomas Penson De Quincey was an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the West.
Known for:
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)
Suspiria de Profundis (1845)
On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts (1827)
The Works of Thomas De Quincey
Autobiographic Sketches
Most used words:
man
,
god
,
children
,
finite
,
years
,
opium
,
creatures
Thomas De Quincey on Wikipedia
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Thomas De Quincey works on Wikisource
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