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Thomas de Quincey

Thomas de Quincey Quotes

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Famous Thomas de Quincey Quotes

“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.”

MenTogetherTermMemoriesFourWindDependsHighestAngelInfiniteUnityBonesDustCombinationBreathingResurrectionScholarElectricalDead ManBreathing LifeElectrical Power
Book:Joan of Arc: And Other Selections from Thomas De Quincey. Joan of Arc. The English mail coach (abridged).. Levana and our ladies of sorrow. Dinner, real and reputed (abridged).. I.. II.. III.. IV.
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“Many a man has risen to eminence under the powerful reaction of his mind in fierce counter-agency to the scorn of the unworthy, daily evoked by his personal defects, who with a handsome person would have sunk into the luxury of a careless life under the tranquillizing smiles of continual admiration.”

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Book:De Quincey's Writings: Essays on philosophical writers and other men of letters. 1854-60. [v. 14 stereotyped
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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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Book:De Quincey's works
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“It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.”

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Book:Confessions of an English Opium-Eater: Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar
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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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Author:Thomas de Quincey
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