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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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For Tea, Though Ridiculed

Thomas De Quincey

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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.

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Call For The Grandest Of All Earthly Spectacles, What Is That? It Is The Sun Going To His Rest.

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.

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.

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.

Reserve Is The Truest Expression Of Respect Towards Those Who Are Its Objects.

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, The First Is A Rudder, The Second An Oar Or A Sail. The First Speaks To The Mere Discursive Understanding; The Second Speaks Ultimately, It May Happen, To The Higher Understanding Or Reason, But Always Through Affections Of Pleasure And Sympathy.

No Progressive Knowledge Will Ever Medicine That Dread Misgiving Of A Mysterious And Pathless Power Given To Words Of A Certain Import.

The Science Of Style As An Organ Of Thought, Of Style In Relation To The Ideas And Feelings, Might Be Called The Organology Of Style.

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 Only By Them - When Suddenly The Voice Of Christianity, Counter-signing The Voice Of Infancy, Raised Them To A Grandeur Transcending The Hebrew Throne, Although Founded By God Himself, And Pronounced Solomon In All His Glory Not To Be Arrayed Like One Of These.

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.

Congratulations

I Feel That There Is No Such Thing As Ultimate Forgetting; Traces Once Impressed Upon The Memory Are Indestructible.

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.

In Many Walks Of Life, A Conscience Is A More Expensive Encumbrance Than A Wife Or A Carriage.

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.

Mathematics Has Not A Foot To Stand Upon Which Is Not Purely Metaphysical.

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.

Fierce Sectarianism Breeds Fierce Latitudinarianism.

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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.

The Laughter Of Girls Is, And Ever Was, Among The Delightful Sounds Of Earth.

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War Has A Deeper And More Ineffable Relation To Hidden Grandeurs In Man Than Has Yet Been Deciphered.

It Is Notorious That The Memory Strengthens As You Lay Burdens Upon It, And Becomes Trustworthy As You Trust It.

Thou Hast The Keys Of Paradise, Oh, Just, Subtle, And Mighty Opium!

Dyspepsy Is The Ruin Of Most Things: Empires, Expeditions, And Everything Else.

Under Our Present Enormous Accumulation Of Books, I Do Affirm That A Most Miserable Distraction Of Choice Must Be Very Generally Incident To The Times; That The Symptoms Of It Are In Fact Very Prevalent, And That One Of The Chief Symptoms Is An Enormous 'gluttonism' For Books.

I Stood Checked For A Moment - Awe, Not Fear, Fell Upon Me - And Whist I Stood, A Solemn Wind Began To Blow, The Most Mournful That Ever Ear Heard. Mournful! That Is Saying Nothing. It Was A Wind That Had Swept The Fields Of Mortality For A Hundred Centuries.

The Mere Understanding, However Useful And Indispensable, Is The Meanest Faculty In The Human Mind And The Most To Be Distrusted.

A Promise Is Binding In The Inverse Ratio Of The Numbers To Whom It Is Made.

Rightly It Is Said Of Utter, Utter Misery, That It 'cannot Be Remembered'; Itself, Being A Rememberable Thing, Is Swallowed Up In Its Own Chaos.

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.

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.

Grief Even In A Child Hates The Light And Shrinks From Human Eyes.

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.

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.

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Even Imperfection Itself May Have Its Ideal Or Perfect State.

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.

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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.

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