I stood checked for a moment - awe, not fear, fell upon me - and whist I stood, a solemn wind began to blow, the most mournful that ever ear heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a profound moment of awe in the face of mortality and the passage of time.
In this quote, Thomas De Quincey describes a moment of deep reflection where he is overcome not by fear, but by a sense of reverence and awe as he experiences a melancholic wind. This wind symbolizes the enduring nature of mortality and the weight of centuries of existence, inviting the listener to contemplate the impact of time on life and the feelings of loss and nostalgia that accompany such reflections.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of cherishing life.
But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.
The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.
Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.
Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!
Flowers that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children - honored as the jewelry of God.
And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.
I suppose it's a very highly developed form of denial, but some part of me completely denies that I'm a performer.
The Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God.
Sitting is the gateway of truth to total liberation.
It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas
Being able to afford everything you desire is not, by any means, the worst thing that can happen to you. But, depressingly, and more profoundly, neither is it the best.
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