William Blake Quotes - Page 2

He who mocks the infant's faithShall be mock'd in age and death.He who shall teach the child to doubtThe rotting grave shall ne'er get out.He who respects the infant's faithTriumphs over hell and death.The child's toys and the old man's reasonsAre the fruits of the two seasons.- "Auguries of Innocence
William Blake
I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & de
William Blake
For Mercy has a human heart;Pity, a human face;And Love, the human form divine:And Peace the human dress.Songs of InnocenceCruelty has a human heartAnd jealousy a human face,Terror the human form divine,And secrecy the human dress.The human dress is forged iron,The human form a fiery forge,The human face a furnace seal'd,The human heart its hungry gorge.Songs of Experience - This poem was discovered posthumously.
William Blake
The naked woman’s body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man.
William Blake
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.
William Blake
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,Who countest the steps of the Sun:Seeking after that sweet golden climeWhere the traveller's journey is done. Where the Youth pined away with desire,And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
William Blake
For I dance And drink and sing,Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.If thought is lifeAnd strength and breathAnd the wantOf thought is deathThen am IA happy flyIf I liveOr if I die
William Blake
Active evil is better than passive good
William Blake
Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
William Blake
Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel: Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, & not pronounce heartily! That to Labour in Knowledge. is to Build up Jerusalem: and to Despise Knowledge, is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders. And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another; calling it pride & selfishness & sin; mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift. which always appear to the ignorance-loving Hypocrite, as Sins. but that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel Man. is not so in the sight of our kind God.
William Blake
When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend
William Blake
I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of ImaginationImagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel.
William Blake
IV   The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels.V   If the many become the same as the few, when possess'd, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man.VI   If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot.VII   The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite.
William Blake
Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.
William Blake
Expect poison from the standing water.
William Blake
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
William Blake
My mother groaned, my father wept,into the dangerous world I leapt.
William Blake
Thou art a manGod is no moreThy own humanityLearn to adore
William Blake
The following Discourse [on art, by Sir Joshua Reynolds] is particularly Interesting to Blockheads as it endeavours to prove that There is No such thing as Inspiration & that any Man of a plain Understanding may by Thieving from Others become a Mich Angelo.
William Blake
When nations grow old the Arts grow coldAnd commerce settles on every tree
William Blake
Man has no Body distinct from his soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
William Blake
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
William Blake
How can a bird that is born for joySit in a cage and sing?
William Blake
We live as One Man for contracting our infinite senses we behold multitude or expanding: we behold as one.
William Blake
May God us keepFrom Single vision and Newton's sleep.
William Blake
May God us keepFrom Single vision and Newton's sleep.
William Blake
Time is the mercy of Eternity without Time's swiftness/ Which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment.
William Blake
He who replies to words of doubtdoth put the light of knowledge out.
William Blake
But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.
William Blake
The Devil answer'd: bray a fool in a morter with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him; if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? murder those who were murder'd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defense before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.
William Blake
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
William Blake
excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand.
William Blake
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
William Blake
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.
William Blake
If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.
William Blake
I give you the end of a golden string,Only wind it into a ball,It will lead you in at Heaven's gateBuilt in Jerusalem's wall.
William Blake
How can the bird that is born for joySit in a cage and sing?How can a child, when fears annoy,But droop his tender wing,And forget his youthful spring?
William Blake
But to go to school in a summer morn,O! It drives all joy away;Under a cruel eye outworn,The little ones spend the dayIn sighing and dismay.
William Blake
I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
William Blake
A Robin Redbreast in a CagePuts all Heaven in a Rage.A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeonsShudders Hell thro’ all its regions.A Dog starv’d at his Master’s GatePredicts the ruin of the State.A Horse misus’d upon the RoadCalls to Heaven for Human blood.Each outcry of the hunted HareA fiber from the Brain does tear.
William Blake
I wander through each chartered street,Near where the chartered Thames does flow;A mark in every face I meet,Marks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every man,In every infant’s cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forged manacles I hear:How the chimney-sweeper’s cryEvery blackening church appals,And the hapless soldier’s sighRuns in blood down palace-walls.But most, through midnight streets I hearHow the youthful harlot’s curseBlasts the new-born infant’s tear,And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
William Blake
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.
William Blake
The lamb misused breeds public strifeAnd yet forgives the butcher's knife.
William Blake
Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.
William Blake
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
William Blake
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
William Blake
What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.
William Blake
Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.
William Blake
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
William Blake
When the stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
William Blake
The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.
William Blake
For every thing that lives is Holy.
William Blake
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite.
William Blake
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.
William Blake
Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
William Blake
The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.
William Blake
A truth that's told with bad intentBeats all the lies you can invent.
William Blake
Exuberance is beauty.
William Blake
A man can't soar too high, when he flies with his own wings.
William Blake
What is now proved was once only imagined.
William Blake