The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

estoring order.
‘The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry’ (1704) ch. 2
Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder!
In William S. Walsh ‘A Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities’ (1893) p. 1052
4.37 Nigel Dennis 1912—
I am a well-to-do, revered and powerful figure. That Establishment which we call England has
taken me in: I am become her Fortieth Article. I sit upon her Boards, I dominate her stage, her
museums, her dances and her costumes; I have an honoured voice in her elected House. To her—
and her alone—I bend the knee, and in return for my homage she is gently blind to my small
failings, asking only that I indulge them privately.
‘Cards of Identity’ (1955) pt. 2, p. 230
4.38 Thomas De Quincey 1785-1859
The burden of the incommunicable.
‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’ (1822) pt. 1
So, then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted 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) pt. 1
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) pt. 2 ‘The Pleasures of Opium’
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!
‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’ (1822) pt. 2 ‘The Pleasures of Opium’
Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated—everlasting farewells!
‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’ (1822) pt. 3 ‘The Pains of Opium’
Murder considered as one of the fine arts.
Title of essay in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ February 1827
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.
‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’ Second Paper in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ November 1839
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power.
‘Essays on the Poets’ ‘Pope’
Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to amuse. Indeed!...The true antithesis to knowledge,
in this case, is not pleasure, but power. All that is literature seeks to communicate power; all that
is not literature, to communicate knowledge.
‘Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected’ no. 3, in the ‘London Magazine’ January-July
1823. De Quincey adds that he is indebted for this distinction to ‘many years’ conversation with Mr
Wordsworth’