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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.

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
Whole
Vast
Arts
Intellect
Development
Art
Composes
Body
Irritation
Human
Sciences
Humans
Machinery

More quotes by Thomas de Quincey

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Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.
Thomas de Quincey
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Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.
Thomas de Quincey
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All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.
Thomas de Quincey
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Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear.
Thomas de Quincey
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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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The pulpit style of Germany has been always rustically negligent, or bristling with pedantry.
Thomas de Quincey
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War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.
Thomas de Quincey
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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
Thomas de Quincey
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As is the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius.
Thomas de Quincey
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Flowers that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children - honored as the jewelry of God.
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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Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated everlasting farewells!
Thomas de Quincey
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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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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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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