Wednesday, July 28, 2010

''The mind is its own place''


Click to enlarge

From Milton, Paradise Lost (1674):
                                Farewell happy fields
Where joy forever dwells: Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same...? (I.249-256)

(Illustration is John Martin, Pandemonium, 1841.)

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