Confessions of an English Opium-eater. And Analects from John Paul Richter |
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Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Analects from John Paul Richter Thomas de Quincey No preview available - 2019 |
Common terms and phrases
affecting agitated amongst analytic functions Anastasius appear beatific believe bodily called casuistry child cottage creature darkness David Ricardo death doubt dreams drops druggist earth English eternal Eton expressed faculties feelings friends give grave happiness heart heavens honour hope human hypochondria incident indulgence intel intellectual interest labours laudanum lived London London Magazine look Lord Malay manner Merionethshire mind months moral morning mountains narrative nature necessity never notice o'clock occasion once opium-eater Oxford-street pain Paradise Regained passed perhaps periphrasis person phatically philosopher Piranesi pleasure poet poor PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS quietism reader reason remarkable remember respect Samuel Taylor Coleridge Saturday night scholar seemed sleep sometimes soon sort speak spirit stomach suddenly suffering suppose surgeon take opium THOMAS DE QUINCEY thou thought took torpor Trophonius truth unhappy weeks whilst whole wine wished words youthful
Popular passages
Page 46 - ... of the world within me ! That my pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes : — this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me — in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea — a ^UMO-/ nviyStt for all human woes: here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered : happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat...
Page 82 - I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. This pageant would suddenly dissolve ; and at a clapping of hands would be heard the heart-quaking sound of Consul Romanus ; and immediately came
Page 78 - The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities, or aspirations : he wishes and longs, as earnestly as ever, to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty ; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt.
Page 85 - Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names of the...
Page 83 - But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher: on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very brink of the abyss.
Page 79 - CEdipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams ; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented, nightly, spectacles of more than earthly splendour.
Page 90 - Anthem; and, like that, gave the feeling of a multitudinous movement, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day— a day of crisis and of ultimate hope for human nature, then suffering mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity.
Page 87 - I protest that so awful was the transition from the damned crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and of infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind, I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces.
Page 48 - But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony.
Page 77 - Mr. Ricardo had deduced, £ priori, from the understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentative discussions into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis.