William Blake
Birthdate: November 28, 1757
Birthplace: London, England, United Kingdom
Date of Death: August 12, 1827
Occupation: Artist and Poet
Profile: A leading figure in Romanticism and one of Britain's greatest artists and poets.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake
Number of Quotes: 102
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
A robin red breast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
Auguries of Innocence
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
Auguries of Innocence
Active evil is better than passive good.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?
Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.
As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.
Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read'st black where I read white.
But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.
From a letter to Dr. Trusler, 1799.
Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?
Christ's crucifix shall be made an excuse for executing criminals.
Damn braces: Bless relaxes.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Do what you will, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction.
From an annotation to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses.
Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Every harlot was a virgin once.
Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.
Exuberance is beauty.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.
America a Prophecy
For I dance
And drink & sing:
The Mental Traveller
Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.
Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.
Rossetti Manuscript
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
Pickering Manuscript
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the
scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
The School Boy in Songs of Experience
I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.
I have no name: I am but two days old. What shall I call thee? I happy am, Joy is my name. Sweet joy befall thee!
I must create a system, or be enslav'd by another man's;
I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
Jerusalem
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
If a thing loves, it is infinite.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.
If you have form'd a Circle to go into,
Go into it yourself & see how you would do.
From a letter to Mr. Butts, 1802.
Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.
A popular paraphrase of his perception concept, not a direct quote but perfectly captures his idea.
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
Jerusalem
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Auguries of Innocence
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
The Clod and the Pebble in Songs of Experience
Love to faults is always blind, always is to joy inclined. Lawless, winged, and unconfined, and breaks all chains from every mind.
Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age.
Man was made for Joy & Woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the World we safely go.
Auguries of Innocence
Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, Mock on, 'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
Rossetti Manuscript
My mother groan'd, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
One thought fills immensity.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Opposition is true friendship.
Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Auguries of Innocence
Soon as she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.
The Mental Traveller
That the Jews assumed a right exclusively to the benefits of God will
be a lasting witness against them and the same will it be against Christians.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
Proverbs of Hell in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Proverbs of Hell in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The eye altering, alters all.
The Mental Traveller
The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.
The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the
empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose.
The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.
The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
The man who never in his mind and thoughts travelled to heaven is no artist.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The soul of sweet delight, can never be defiled.
The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Proverbs of Hell in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all
ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
All Religions are One
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
Proverbs of Hell in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
This life's five windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.
The Everlasting Gospel
Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
To generalize is to be an idiot.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Auguries of Innocence
To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with
the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes.
Travelers repose and dream among my leaves.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
The Tyger in Songs of Experience
Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater
hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser's passion, not the thief's.
What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are
not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!
What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.
What is now proved was once only imagined.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the
street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.
When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.
From a letter to William Hayley, 1804.
When the doors of perception are cleansed, men will see things as they truly are, infinite.
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too.
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call moral virtue, and you cannot have moral
virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call moral virtue.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Last on Earth
