He was an English esssayist and accomplished critic, recognized as one of the foremost prose writers of his day; his ornate style, while strongly influenced by the Romantic authors he knew and emulated, owes much to his vivid imagination and desire to recreate his own intense personal experiences. He used his own life as the subject of his most acclaimed work, the “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater” (1822), in which he chronicled his fascinating and horrifying addiction to opium.
The book gives an insightful depiction of drug dependency and an evocative portrait of an altered psychological state.
(1785 – 1859)
– Thomas de Quincey Quotes –
Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.
~ Thomas de Quincey
Even imperfection it self may have its ideal or perfect state.
~ 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 public is a bad guesser.
~ Thomas de Quincey
In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.
~ 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
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man.
~ Thomas de Quincey
All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.
~ 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
Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated – everlasting farewells.
~ Thomas de Quincey
