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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.
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
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Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
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Manchester
England
Thomas Penson De Quincey
De Quincey
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Stepmother
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Oxford
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More quotes by Thomas de Quincey
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.
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There is first the literature of KNOWLEDGE, and secondly, the literature of POWER. The function of the first is -- to teach the function of the second is -- to move.
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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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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.
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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.
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A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.
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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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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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War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.
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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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All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.
Thomas de Quincey
Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.
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Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.
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The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
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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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The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.
Thomas de Quincey
Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear.
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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.
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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.
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Grief even in a child hates the light and shrinks from human eyes.
Thomas de Quincey