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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
Using
Dispense
Habit
Downright
Circumstances
Cheerfully
Part
Propriety
Certain
Refinement
Better
Elegance
Life
Habits
Daily
Necessaries
More quotes by Thomas de Quincey
Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.
Thomas de Quincey
The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.
Thomas de Quincey
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
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
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
All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.
Thomas de Quincey
The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
Thomas de Quincey
Mathematics has not a foot to stand upon which is not purely metaphysical.
Thomas de Quincey
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
The pulpit style of Germany has been always rustically negligent, or bristling with pedantry.
Thomas de Quincey
here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.
Thomas de Quincey
A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.
Thomas de Quincey
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.
Thomas de Quincey
No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.
Thomas de Quincey
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
War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.
Thomas de Quincey
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
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
Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.
Thomas de Quincey
As is the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius.
Thomas de Quincey
