Thomas de Quincey Quotes

Many A Man Has Risen To Eminence Under The Powerful Reaction Of His Mind In Fierce Counter-agency To The Scorn Of The Unworthy, Daily Evoked By His Personal Defects, Who With A Handsome Person Would Have Sunk Into The Luxury Of A Careless Life Under The Tranquillizing Smiles Of Continual Admiration.

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.

There Is A Necessity For A Regulating Discipline Of Exercise That, Whilst Evoking The Human Energies, Will Not Suffer Them To Be Wasted.

It Is Notorious That The Memory Strengthens As You Lay Burdens Upon It, And Becomes Trustworthy As You Trust It.

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.

The Whole Body Of The Arts And Sciences Composes One Vast Machinery For The Irritation And Development Of The Human Intellect.

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.

The Mere Understanding, However Useful And Indispensable, Is The Meanest Faculty In The Human Mind And The Most To Be Distrusted.

Reserve Is The Truest Expression Of Respect Towards Those Who Are Its Objects.

Call For The Grandest Of All Earthly Spectacles, What Is That? It Is The Sun Going To His Rest.

The Public Is A Bad Guesser.