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
deep-love animal breathing
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.
ruins empires expeditions
Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.
keys drug paradise
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!
feet mathematics metaphysical
Mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.
farewell everlasting
Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated everlasting farewells!
knowledge metaphysics
All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.
memories trustworthy notorious
It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it.
dust feet house
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.
medicine mysterious progressive
No progressive knowledge will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless power given to words of a certain import.
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.
memories forget feels
I feel that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible.
fierce sectarianism
Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.
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.
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.