Thomas De Quincey Quotes

Misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.

I have shed many tears of pain and indignation.

For 30 years, I lived in pure hell.

It's never easy to watch. It's never great to see your friend or teammate put himself through hell.

But how to explain suffering because of a man? It's not explainable. With that kind of suffering, a person feels as if they're in hell, because there is no nobility, no greatness - only misery.

Real misery cuts off all paths to itself.

There were moments when I felt seriously unhinged; when I was convinced that I would never, ever recover from what had happened, when it was absolutely clear to me that life from this point on would be constant agony.

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell.

My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.

But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.

It was the closest to purgatory that I've ever experienced while I've been living.

I never imagined what it would be like to spend a 12-hour day crying and covered in blood.

All of my books come from pain.

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.

The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.

There was no reality to pain when it left one, thought while it held one fast all other realities failed.

I wanted to understand pain and the human condition, which is full of pain and regret and sadness - and some happiness, if you're lucky.

Suffering degrades, embitters and enrages.

The word 'suffering' is not in my vocabulary.

In the world of the present, in our time, we feel that suffering, anguish, the torments of body and soul, are greater than ever before in the history of mankind.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

My painting carries with it the message of pain.

From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.