Thomas de Quincey
Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.Collection: Anger
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.Collection: Alone
In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.
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.
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.
Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.
Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual.
Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.
Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.
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.
The public is a bad guesser.
For tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities, or are become so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual.Collection: Intellectual
No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Drinking
All that is literature seeks to communicate powerCollection: Literature
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.Collection: Book
I feel that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible.Collection: Memories
Either the human being must suffer and struggle as the price of a more searching vision, or his gaze must be shallow and without intellectual revelation.Collection: Struggle
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.Collection: Book
It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it.Collection: Memories
The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.Collection: Girl
Allow me to offer my congratulations on the truly admirable skill you have shown in keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing.Collection: Congratulations
As is the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Writing
Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.Collection: Rain
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is--to teach; the function of the second is--to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.Collection: Moving
All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.Collection: Knowledge
All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Night
The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.Collection: Art
Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.Collection: Class
War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.Collection: War
Grief even in a child hates the light and shrinks from human eyes.Collection: Children
Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear.Collection: Kings
Mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.Collection: Feet
There is first the literature of KNOWLEDGE, and secondly, the literature of POWER. The function of the first is -- to teach; the function of the second is -- to move.Collection: Moving
A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.Collection: Numbers
Flowers... that are 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 jewelry of God only by them - when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.Collection: Children
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!Collection: Keys
Out of the ruined lodge and forgotten mansion, bowers that are trodden under foot, and pleasure-houses that are dust, the poet calls up a palingenesis.Collection: Dust
Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.Collection: Empires
The burden of the incommunicable.Collection: Burden
Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.Collection: Scruples
Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.Collection: Fierce
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.Collection: Sacrifice
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.Collection: Children
here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.Collection: Mind
The science of style as an organ of thought, of style in relation to the ideas and feelings, might be called the organology of style.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Blow
Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated everlasting farewells!Collection: Farewell