William Blake quotes:

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To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.
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!
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
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.
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
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.
What is now proved was once only imagined.
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.
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 bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
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.
I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel'd to heaven is no artist.
Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Opposition is true friendship.
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.
Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.
Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too.
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.
Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.
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.
Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
The eye altering, alters all.
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.
If a thing loves, it is infinite.
Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
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.
Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained."
To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour."
In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors."
Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: do be my enemy for friendship's sake.
Active Evil is better than Passive Good.
But if at church they would give some ale. And a pleasant fire our souls to regale. We'd sing and we'd pray all the live long day, Nor ever once from the church to stray.
Death is terrible, tho' borne on angels' wings!
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.
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies & chambers filled with books & pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life; and whose works are the delight & study of Archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality?
Bring me my bow of burning gold: Bring me my arrows of desire: Bring me my spear: O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire.
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 Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid, of Plato & Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible
O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest, And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe; And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers.
Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.
How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you! The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few!
The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
The person who does not believe in miracles surely makes it certain that he or she will never take part in one.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Some say that happiness is not good for mortals, & they ought to be answered that sorrow is not fit for immortals & is utterly useless to any one; a blight never does good to a tree, & if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit, let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight.
None but blockheads copy each other.
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds and binding with briars my joys and desires. (from 'The Garden of Love')
Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage.
As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep. So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
To Chloe's breast young Cupid slily stole, But he crept in at Myra's pocket-hole.
Come live, and be merry, and join with me, To sing the sweet chorus of 'Ha ha he!
Shame is pride's cloak.
They solved the problem of coexistence through the use of individual stereo headphones.
Do what you will, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction.
Christ's crucifix shall be made an excuse for executing criminals.
The Sick Rose O Rose, thou art sick. The invisible worm That flies in the night In the howling storm Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow
The crow wished everything was black, the Owl, that everything was white.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
All the destruction in Christian Europe has arisen from deism, which is natural religion.
The soul of sweet delight, can never be defiled.
Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
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.
Then my verse I dishonor, my pictures despise, my person degrade and my temper chastise; and the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame; and my talents I bury, and dead is my fame.
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 day In sighing and dismay.
I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.
When the doors of perception are cleansed, men will see things as they truly are, infinite.
Energy is an eternal delight.
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.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.
Exuberance is beauty.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocite, flatterer.
The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.
For all eternity, I forgive you and you forgive me.
They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.
To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess.
General knowledges are those knowledges that idiots possess.
More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul.
The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
The Goddess Fortune is the devil's servant, ready to kiss any one's ass.
A DIVINE IMAGE Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine, And Secresy the human dress. The human dress is forged iron, The human form a fiery forge, The human face a furnace sealed, The human heart its hungry gorge.
To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower.
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.
Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings To his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks: He withers all in silence, and his hand Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
I cry, Love! Love! Love! happy happy Love! free as the mountain wind!
Every harlot was a virgin once.
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.
The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.
Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading.
To generalize is to be an idiot.
One thought fills immensity.
He who pretends to be either painter or engraver without being a master of drawing is an imposter.
Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity.
Children of the future age Reading this indignant page Know that in a former time Love, sweet love, was thought a crime
Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace, Secret joys and secret smiles, Little pretty infant wiles.
Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand.
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Thinking as I do that the Creator of this world is a very cruel being, and being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: ''the Son, O how unlike the Father!'' First God Almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.

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