Thomas De Quincey Quotes (13 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Thomas De Quincey

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Thomas De Quincey

Thomas De Quincey: 13 quotes16 likes

Famous Thomas De Quincey Quotes

“Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. II.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Appendix.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“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 book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. I.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“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 book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. I.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“The burden of the incommunicable.”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. I.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

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

Thomas De Quincey

Letter to Hessey (1823).

Thomas De Quincey 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

"A Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1839). Source: Thomas de Quincy. On Murder (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 84

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

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. III.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“Flowers … that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their colouring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children—honoured as the jewellery 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.”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. I.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“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 book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. II, Recalling the day in 1804 when he first took opium.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“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 book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“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 book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. I.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

“In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

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