The works of Thomas De Quincey "the English opium eater", Volume 4

Front Cover
A. & C. Black, 1862
 

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 45 - For 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.
Page 5 - Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle (as it generally is in the pulpit, and at the Old Bailey) ; and that, I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it— that is, in relation to good taste.
Page 334 - I remarked this ominous accident of our situation. We were on the wrong side of the road. But then, it may be said, the other party, if other there was, might also be on the wrong side; and two wrongs might make a right. That was not likely. The same motive which had drawn us to the right-hand side of the road — viz., the luxury of the soft beaten sand, as contrasted with the paved centre — would prove attractive to others.
Page 345 - Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking ; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival, running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. Her running was the running of panic ; and often she looked back as to some dreadful enemy in...
Page 3 - Lecture on Murder, considered as one of the Fine Arts; a task which might be easy enough three or four centuries ago, when the art was little understood, and few great models had been exhibited; but in this age, when masterpieces of excellence have been executed by professional men, it must be evident, that in the style of criticism applied to them, the public will look for something of a corresponding improvement. Practice and theory must advance part passu.
Page 339 - Even in that moment the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we had struck the off-wheel of the little gig, which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far advanced, as to be accurately parallel with the near-wheel.
Page 334 - I saw, not discursively, or by effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid simultaneous intuition. Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what a sullen mystery of fear, what a sigh of woe, was that which stole upon the air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel was heard ! A...
Page 46 - Very soon, sir,' he used to say, 'men will have lost the art of killing poultry: the very rudiments of the art will have perished!' In the year 1811 he retired from general society. Toad-in-the-hole was no more seen in any public resort. We missed him from his wonted haunts — nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.
Page 327 - ... misfortune ? I did not exult : I delighted in no man's punishment, though it were even merited. But these personal distinctions (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an instant an old friend of mine, whom I had known in the south for some years as the most masterly of mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe that could (if any could) have driven sixin-hand full gallop over Al...
Page 236 - And again at p. 343 of the same edition, after exposing at some length the circumstances which disqualify "any commodity or all commodities together" from performing the office of a standard of value, he again states the indispensable condition which must be realized in that commodity which should pretend to such an office; and again he adds immediately — "of such a commodity we have no knowledge.

Bibliographic information