Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the enjoyment derived from opium is not true happiness, but rather a momentary escape that carries serious consequences.
Thomas De Quincey's quote reflects on the heavy nature of opium's influence on a person's state of mind. While it may offer temporary pleasure, the joy it provides is overshadowed by the grave realities that accompany its use, suggesting that true laughter and happiness cannot stem from such fleeting and ultimately burdensome pleasures.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about addiction and its impacts on mental health.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
I don't care what consequence it brings, I have been a fool for lesser things.
Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed.
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.
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