Top 63 Quotes & Sayings by 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.

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The public is a bad guesser.

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

Mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Grief even in a child hates the light and shrinks from human eyes.

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.

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

The burden of the incommunicable.

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.

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.

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.

Reserve is the truest expression of respect towards those who are its objects.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.

It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it.

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.

Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.

The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.

Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.

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

No progressive knowledge will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless power given to words of a certain import.

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.

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

All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

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.

All that is literature seeks to communicate power