"Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their ..." — Thomas de Quincey

The public is a bad guesser.

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.

Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

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.