De Quincey, Thomas, 1785-1859 / 2008-06-10 00:00:00

EBOOK DE QUINCY'S PAPERS ***


Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.


NARRATIVE AND MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS.
BY
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.


CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

THE HOUSEHOLD WRECK
THE SPANISH NUN
FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

SYSTEM OF THE HEAVENS AS REVEALED BY LORD ROSSE'S TELESCOPES
MODERN SUPERSTITION
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM-EATING
TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
ON WAR
THE LAST DAYS OF IMMANUEL KANT


THE HOUSEHOLD WRECK.

'To be weak,' we need not the great archangel's voice to tell us,
'_is to be miserable_.' All weakness is suffering and humiliation,
no matter for its mode or its subject. Beyond all other weakness,
therefore, and by a sad prerogative, as more miserable than what is
most miserable in all, that capital weakness of man which regards the
_tenure_ of his enjoyments and his power to protect, even for a
moment, the crown of flowers--flowers, at the best, how frail and few!
--which sometimes settles upon his haughty brow. There is no end, there
never will be an end, of the lamentations which ascend from earth and
the rebellious heart of her children, upon this huge opprobrium of
human pride--the everlasting mutabilities of all which man can grasp by
his power or by his aspirations, the fragility of all which he
inherits, and the hollowness visible amid the very raptures of
enjoyment to every eye which looks for a moment underneath the
draperies of the shadowy _present_, the hollowness, the blank
treachery of hollowness, upon which all the pomps and vanities of life
ultimately repose.
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