"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."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from EnglandEssayists from EnglandTranslators from EnglandJournalists from EnglandMemoirists from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"A Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1839).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_De_Quincey
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Thomas De Quincey
1785 – 1859
auch: Thomas de Quincey, britischer Schriftsteller, Essayist und Journalist
19 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Thomas De Quincey →
Related Quotes
"At one time five of us tried to understand De Quincey's marvelous "Dreams" more sympathetically, by drugging ourselve…"
"It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy …"
"Everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated—everlasting farewells!"
"Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities … will always be the favourite…"
"In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage."
"A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made."
"Dyspepsy is the ruin of most things: empires, expeditions, and everything else."
"The burden of the incommunicable."
"Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest…"
"So, then, Oxford Street, stonyhearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears…"