William Blake Quotes

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.

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

The Britons (say historians) were naked, civilized men, learned, studious, abstruse in thought and contemplation; naked, simple, plain in their acts and manners; wiser than after ages.

I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven's gate Built in Jerusalem's wall.

To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but immediately to the understanding or reason?

Poetry fettered fetters the human race.

Let the men do their duty & the women will be such wonders; the female life lives from the light of the male: see a man's female dependants, you know the man.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

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.

My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt.

The Errors of a Wise Man make your Rule Rather than the Perfections of a Fool.

The child's toys and the old man's reasons are the fruits of two seasons.

Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.

General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocite, flatterer.

He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars.

Mercy, pity, and peace, Are the world's release.

Travelers repose and dream among my leaves.

The Angel that presided o'er my birth Said, 'Little creature, formed of joy and mirth, Go love without the help of any thing on earth'.

Nature in darkness groans and men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night: restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words of stern philosophy and knead the bread of knowledge with tears and groans.

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love All pray in their distress, And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy Pity Peace and Love Is God our father dear. And Mercy Pity Peace and Love Is Man his child and care. Then every man of every clime That prays in his distress Prays to the human form divine: Love Mercy Pity Peace. And all must love the human form In heathen, Turk, or Jew. Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand.

When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea? O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.

O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou build thy dark, Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs, Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.

To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

What is it men in women do require: The lineaments of gratified desire. What is it women do in men require: The lineaments of gratified desire.

I rest not from my great task! | To open the Eternal Worlds, | to open the immortal Eyes of Man | Inwards into the Worlds of Thought; | Into eternity, ever expanding | In the Bosom of God, | The Human Imagination

Gratitude is heaven itself; there could be no heaven without gratitude.

Active Evil is better than Passive Good.

Rhetoric completes the tools of learning. Dialectic zeros in on the logic of things, of particular systems of thought or subjects. Rhetoric takes the next grand step and brings all these subjects together into one whole.

A dog starved at his master's gate Predicts the ruin of the state.

He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God.

If Christianity was morality, Socrates would be the Saviour.

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.

He who wants, but doesn't act, is a pest.

Pride is a personal commitment. It is an attitude which separates excellence from mediocrity.

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod, Or Love in a golden bowl?

The busy bee has no time for sorrow.

Each man must create his own system or else he is a slave to another mans

Man was made for joy and woe, and when this we rightly know through the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul to bind.

The crow wished everything was black, the Owl, that everything was white.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

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.

Mysteries are not to be solved. They eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.

Heaven is in a grain of sand.

The naked women's body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man.

Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public Records to be true.

For all eternity, I forgive you and you forgive me.

Imitation is criticism.