Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“years that were far asunder were bound together by subtle links of suffering derived from a common root.”
- Date
- 1821
- Local voice
- Authorial / signed preface voice · Thomas De Quincey (autobiographical narrator)
Meaning of “years that were far asunder were bound together…”
De Quincey describes how pain separated by many years can still feel connected when later suffering grows from an earlier unresolved source.
Where does it come from?
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, from the autobiographical narrative first published in the London Magazine in 1821 and represented by Project Gutenberg #2040. The passage belongs to De Quincey’s historical life-writing around opium use and suffering; it is not medical guidance about addiction or trauma.
Why the local voice matters
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. De Quincey reflects retrospectively on connected periods of suffering in his own autobiographical narrative; the work’s historical opium context remains explicit.