Thomas de Quincey

“A long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter.”

— 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…

— 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…

— Thomas de Quincey

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

— Thomas de Quincey

The burden of the incommunicable.

— Thomas de Quincey

Paint me an eternal tea-pot, for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four o'clock in the morning.

— 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…

— 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

Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair…

— 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…

— 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…

— Thomas de Quincey

“If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next…

— Thomas de Quincey

For tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities, or are become so from wine-drinking, and are…

— Thomas de Quincey

“the tyranny of the human face”

— 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…

— Thomas de Quincey

Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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.…

— 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…

— 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…

— Thomas de Quincey

“It is remarkable, however, that at the very lowest point of Kant's depression, when he became perfectly incapable of conversing with any…

— 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…

— 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…

— Thomas De Quincey