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Thomas de Quincey Biography

Thomas Penson De Quincey (/də ˈkwɪnsi/; 15 August 1785 – 8 December 1859) was an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the West.

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Thomas de Quincey Quotes

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

Feels, Forget, Forgetting, Memories, Thing, Ultimate

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

Everlasting, Farewell, Farewells, Reverberated

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.

Book, Communicate, Literature, Pleasure, Power, True

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

Knowledge, Metaphysics, Parts, Perhaps, Revolve

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

Dear, Dear Friend, Friend, Rigmarole, Scruples, Talks

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

Empires, Everything, Expeditions, Ruin, Ruins

The burden of the incommunicable.

Burden, Incommunicable

The public is a bad guesser.

Bad, Guesser, Public

Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it 'cannot be remembered'; itself, being a rememberable thing, is swallowed up in its own chaos.

Chaos, Misery, Said, Swallowed

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.

Absurdly, Beer, Drinking, Man, Men, Sobriety

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

Come, Leave, Men, Solitude, World

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.

Doubt, Follow, Person, Thinking, Writing

Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual.

Beverages, Coarse, Intellectual, Sensibilities, Tea, Though

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.

Men, Nature, Peace, Trouble

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.

Death, Drinking, Incivility, Indulges, Murder, Procrastination

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.

Book, Choices, Enormous, Facts, Incident, Symptoms

Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.

Ideal, Imperfection, May, Perfect, States

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

Earth, Girl, Girls, Laughter, Sound

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

Bristling, Germany, Negligent, Pulpit, Style

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.

Grandeur, Men, Rank, Sacrifice, Self, Truth

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