Thomas De Quincey Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

Infirmity and misery do not of necessity imply guilt. — Thomas De Quincey

I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. — Thomas De Quincey

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. — Thomas De Quincey

The silence was more profound than that of midnight; and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence. — 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

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

Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium! — Thomas De Quincey

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. — Thomas De Quincey

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

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. — 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

Whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow - the most mournful that ear ever heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a thousand centuries. Many times since, upon a summer day, when the sun is at its hottest, I have heard the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell: it is in this world the one sole audible symbol of eternity. — Thomas De Quincey

Under our present enormous accumulation of books, I do affirm that a most miserable distraction of choice must be very generally incident to the times; that the symptoms of it are in fact very prevalent, and that one of the chief symptoms is an enormous 'gluttonism' for books. — Thomas De Quincey

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. — Thomas De Quincey

Grief even in a child hates the light and shrinks from human eyes. — Thomas De Quincey

Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear. — Thomas De Quincey

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

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

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 ... — Thomas De Quincey

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. — Thomas De Quincey

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

I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, — Thomas De Quincey

The burden of the incommunicable. — Thomas De Quincey

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. — Thomas De Quincey

Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole. — Thomas De Quincey

Kant ate but once a day, and drank no beer. Of this liquor, (I mean the strong black beer,) he was, indeed, the most determined enemy. If ever a man died prematurely, Kant would say - 'He has been drinking beer, I presume. — Thomas De Quincey

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. — Thomas De Quincey

The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect. — Thomas De Quincey

Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated everlasting farewells! — 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

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

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. — Thomas De Quincey

Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feelings than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that "decent drapery" which time or indulgence to human frailty may have drawn over them; accordingly, the greater part of our confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers. — Thomas De Quincey

Mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical. — 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 opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations. He wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love: he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise. I — Thomas De Quincey

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them. — Thomas De Quincey

The public is a bad guesser. — 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

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! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath; and to the guilty man, for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure of blood.... — Thomas De Quincey

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

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. — Thomas De Quincey

The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits, and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease; but as I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted,
That those eat now who never ate before;
And those who always ate, now eat the more. — Thomas De Quincey

Prophet of evil I ever am to myself: forced for ever into sorrowful auguries that I have no power to hide from my own heart, no, not through one night's solitary dreams. — Thomas De Quincey

To suppose a reader thoroughly indifferent to Kant, is to suppose him thoroughly unintellectual; and, therefore, though in reality he should happen not to regard him with interest, it is one of the fictions of courtesy to presume that he does. — Thomas De Quincey

the tyranny of the human face — Thomas De Quincey

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. — Thomas De Quincey

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

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

Ah, reader! I would the gods had made thee rhythmical, that thou mightest comprehend the thousandth part of my labours in the evasion of cacophony. — Thomas De Quincey

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man; thus, in a symbolic language universally understood, seeking (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)
' Humbly to express
A penitential loneliness. — Thomas De Quincey

Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else. — 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

All that is literature seeks to communicate power — Thomas De Quincey

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

The town of L - represented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, and brooded over by a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife, were suspended; a respite granted from the secret burthens of the heart; a sabbath of repose; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm: a tranquility that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose. — Thomas De Quincey

No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude. — Thomas De Quincey

I question whether any Turk, of all that have entered the Paradise of Opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had. But, indeed, I hounour the barbarians too much by supposing them capable of any pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. — Thomas De Quincey

Crocodiles, you will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does not change, - that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. That may be; but the reason is that the crocodile does not live fast - he is a slow coach. I believe it is generally understood among naturalists that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. — Thomas De Quincey

Ideas! There is no occasion for them; all that class of ideas which can be available in such a case has a language of representative feelings. — Thomas De Quincey

For tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, 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; — Thomas De Quincey

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. — Thomas De Quincey

There is a necessity for a regulating discipline of exercise that, whilst evoking the human energies, will not suffer them to be wasted. — Thomas De Quincey

A long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter. — 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

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. — Thomas De Quincey

Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it 'cannot be remembered'; itself, being a rememberable thing, is swallowed up in its own chaos. — Thomas De Quincey

For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher: from my birth I was made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days. — Thomas De Quincey

As is the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius. — Thomas De Quincey

War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered. — Thomas De Quincey

The pulpit style of Germany has been always rustically negligent, or bristling with pedantry. — Thomas De Quincey

Grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest us with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. — Thomas De Quincey

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep. — Thomas De Quincey

Reserve is the truest expression of respect towards those who are its objects. — Thomas De Quincey

Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state. — 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

I feel that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible. — Thomas De Quincey

Turkish opium-eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. — Thomas De Quincey