Quote

The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.

Thomas de Quincey

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
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
Image
Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated everlasting farewells!
Thomas de Quincey
Image
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.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
As is the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
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
Image
Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
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
Image
A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
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
Image
No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.
Thomas de Quincey
Image
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