WORDS FROM A GREAT MIND

Thomas De Quincey

Essayist & literary critic

Portrait of Thomas De Quincey
Born
15 August 1785
Died
8 December 1859
Lived in
Manchester, London, Oxford, Grasmere & Edinburgh

Thomas De Quincey was an English essayist best known for Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. His ornate, dreamlike prose moved between autobiography, criticism, history, humour, and the darker landscapes of memory.

A LESSER-KNOWN DETAIL

As a teenager he ran away from school and later lived in severe poverty on the streets of London. Those experiences returned throughout his writing as vivid memories and dreams.

Words by 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 ↗
“Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual.”
Thomas De Quincey ↗
“Happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket.”
Thomas De Quincey ↗