Thomas de Quincey
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson De Quinceywas 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...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth15 August 1785
secret mind age
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.
expression objects reserves
Reserve is the truest expression of respect towards those who are its objects.
knowledge metaphysics
All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.
numbers promise ratios
A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.
struggle suffering vision
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.
men solitude doe
No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.
memories angel men
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.
powerful men agency
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.
sacrifice men self
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.
depressing art grief
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.
style germany pulpit
The pulpit style of Germany has been always rustically negligent, or bristling with pedantry.
elegance habit refinement
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.
fierce sectarianism
Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.
book literature pleasure
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.