Quote

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.

Thomas de Quincey

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Thomas de Quincey
Age: 74 †
Born: 1785
Born: August 15
Died: 1859
Died: December 8
Author
Autobiographer
Essayist
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Prosaist
Translator
Writer
Manchester
England
Thomas Penson De Quincey
De Quincey
Aware
Floor
Maker
Fireside
Rain
Closed
Curtains
Wintry
Wind
Surely
Flowing
Shutters
Divine
Rage
Tea
Ample
Pleasure
Clock
Candle
Raging
Four
Fairs
Pleasures
Candles
Everyone
Fair
Makers
Whilst
Without
Warm
Warmth
Attend
Audibly

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No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.
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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.
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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.
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Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear.
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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.
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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.
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The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.
Thomas de Quincey
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Grief even in a child hates the light and shrinks from human eyes.
Thomas de Quincey
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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.
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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.
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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.
Thomas de Quincey
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A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.
Thomas de Quincey
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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.
Thomas de Quincey