So when man’s desire to rest from spiritual labour, and his thirst to fill his art with mere sensation and memory, seem upon the point of triumph, some miracle transforms them to a new inspiration; and here and there among the pictures born of sensation and memory is the murmuring of a new ritual, the glimmering of new talismans and symbols.

William Butler Yeats, William Blake and his Illustrations to The Divine Comedy

Hermetic quote Yeats William Blake and his Illustrations to the Divine Comedy desire rest spiritual labour thirst fill art sensation memory new ritual talismans symbols

Consider also:

  1. “but the immortal part makes all his labours vain, and turns his pyramids to ‘grains of sand,’ his ‘pillars’ to ‘dust on the fly’s wing,’ and makes of ‘his starry heavens a moth of gold and silver mocking his anxious grasp.'”
  2. “when man’s desire to rest from spiritual labour, and his thirst to fill his art with mere sensation and memory, seem upon the point of triumph, some miracle transforms them to a new inspiration”
  3. “he finally escaped from ‘temptations and perturbations’ which sought to destroy ‘the imaginative power’ at ‘the hands of Venetian and Flemish Demons.'”
  4. “Man has two minds: the first beholding all, As from a centre to the endless end: The second reaches from the outer wall, And seeks the centre. This I comprehend. But in the first: ‘I can–but what is worth?’ And in the second: ‘I am dust and earth!'”
  5. “As poetry admits not a letter that is insignificant, so painting admits not a grain of sand or a blade of grass insignificant, much less an insignificant blot or blur.”