20 quotes
Solitude, though silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone.
In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it.
The laughter of girls is, and ever was, among the delightful sounds of earth.
Coleridge and Opium-Eating (1845)
Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else.
Letter to Hessey (1823)
A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
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.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!
Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated—everlasting farewells!
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
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.
Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities … will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
The burden of the incommunicable.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
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.
The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.
Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them; and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
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.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, what is that? It is that man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822)
A great scholar…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.
Joan of Arc (1847)
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. Once begin [sic] upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.
A Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (1839)