
“Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us.”
"In the Ranks of the C.I.V.", by Erskine Childers, Smith & Elder and Co. (London, 1901), p. 127.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918)
“Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us.”
The Rubaiyat (1120)
Quote in Van Doesburg's text 'Towards white painting', Paris, December 1929, in 'Art Concret' April 1930; as quoted in Theo van Doesburg, Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, p. 183
1926 – 1931
“Suns may set and rise again. For us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.”
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus<br/>rumoresque senum severiorum<br/>omnes unius aestimemus assis
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
V, lines 1–6
Thomas Campion's translation:
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love;
And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,
Let us not weigh them: Heaven's great lamps do dive
Into their west, and straight again revive,
But, soon as once set is our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.
From A Book of Airs (1601)
Carmina
Context: Let us live, my Lesbia, and love, and value at one farthing all the talk of crabbed old men. Suns may set and rise again. For us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.
“The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.”
Book II
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
“The sun does not set, nor rises, the sun is fixed at one single point.”