William Blake's Quotes

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

William Blake

Opposition is true friendship.

William Blake

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

William Blake

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.

William Blake

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.

William Blake

Exuberance is beauty.

William Blake

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

William Blake

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.

William Blake

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

William Blake

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.

William Blake

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!

William Blake

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

William Blake

I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.

William Blake

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.

William Blake

Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.

William Blake

Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?

William Blake

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.

William Blake

Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too.

William Blake

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.

William Blake

Great things are done when men and mountains meet.

William Blake

The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.

William Blake

One thought fills immensity.

William Blake

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

William Blake

Travelers repose and dream among my leaves.

William Blake

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

William Blake

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.

William Blake

The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.

William Blake

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.

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

Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.

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

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

A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.

William Blake

The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

William Blake

If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.

William Blake

Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.

William Blake

What is now proved was once only imagined.

William Blake

Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.

William Blake