My dreams were the immediate and proximate
cause of my acutest suffering. The sense of
space, and in the end, the sense of time, were
both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes,
&c. were exhibited in proportions so vast as the
bodily eye is not fitted to conceive. Space swelled,
and was amplified to an extent of unutterable
infinity. I sometimes seemed to have lived for
70 or 100 years in one night; nay, sometimes
had feelings representative of a millennium
passed in that time.
—Thomas De Quincey
