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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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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
Habit
Downright
Circumstances
Cheerfully
Part
Propriety
Certain
Refinement
Better
Elegance
Life
Habits
Daily
Necessaries
Using
Dispense

More quotes by Thomas de Quincey

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All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.
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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.
Thomas de Quincey
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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.
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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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.
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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Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated everlasting farewells!
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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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.
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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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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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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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
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Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.
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
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All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.
Thomas de Quincey
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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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Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to amuse. Indeed! A true antithesis to knowledge, in this case, is not pleasure, but power. All that is literature seeks to communicate power all that is not literature, to communicate knowledge.
Thomas de Quincey
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Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.
Thomas de Quincey