1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Context: People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don't know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage.
I do know that there is a release, the belated release. A justly or unjustly ruined reputation, poverty, disastrous circumstances, misfortune, they all turn you into a prisoner. You cannot always tell what keeps you confined, what immures you, what seems to bury you, and yet you can feel those elusive bars, railings, walls. Is all this illusion, imagination? I don't think so. And then one asks: My God! will it be for long, will it be for ever, will it be for eternity?
“Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish’d at me.
Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination”
Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 1, plate 5, lines 16-20 The Words of Blake
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William Blake 249
English Romantic poet and artist 1757–1827Related quotes
“A greater history opens before my eyes,
A greater task awaits me.”
Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo;
Majus opus moveo.
Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo;
Majus opus moveo.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book VII, Lines 44–45 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald)
“God, if you ever loved me, open my eyes for me when I'm being this stupid! (Ron)”
Source: Once Dead, Twice Shy
Canto XIX, lines 58–63 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 406.