Allow me to offer my congratulations on the truly admirable skill you have shown in keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing.
– 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
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
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
In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.
– Thomas de Quincey
It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.
– Thomas de Quincey
Paint me an eternal tea-pot, for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four o'clock in the morning.
– Thomas de Quincey
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
Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual.
– Thomas de Quincey
The public is a bad guesser.
– Thomas de Quincey
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!