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Degrade first the Arts if you'd Mankind Degrade. Hire Idiots to Paint with cold light & hot shade: Give high Price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace, And with Labours of Ignorance fill every place.
William Blake -
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'.
William Blake
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Demonstration, similitude & harmony are objects of reasoning. Invention, identity & melody are objects of intuition.
William Blake -
The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.
William Blake -
You become what you behold.
William Blake -
If you trap the moment before it's ripe, The tears of repentence you'll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go You can never wipe off the tears of woe.
William Blake -
Down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way, till a void boundless as the nether sky appeared beneath us, and we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity; but I said: if you please we will commit ourselves to this void and see whether providence is here also.
William Blake -
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.
William Blake
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The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
William Blake -
The eye sees more than the heart knows.
William Blake -
Men are admitted into heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory.
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 -
The hand of Vengeance found the Bed To which the Purple Tyrant fled The iron hand crush'd the tyrant's head And became Tyrant in his stead.
William Blake -
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
William Blake
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The worship of God is, Honouring his gifts in other men each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best; those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God.
William Blake -
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?
William Blake -
A dog starv'd at the master's gate Predicts the ruin of the State. A horse misus'd upon the road Calls to heaven for human blood. Each outcry of the hunted hare A fibre from the brain does tear, A skylark wounded on the wing, A cherubim does cease to sing.
William Blake -
Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.
William Blake -
You smile with pomp and rigor, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue and get murdered time after time.
William Blake -
Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs and flaming hair, But desire gratified Plants fruits of life and beauty there.
William Blake
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I asked a thief to steal me a peach: He turned up his eyes. I asked a lithe lady to lie her down: Holy and meek, she cries. As soon as I went An angel came. He winked at the thief And smiled at the dame- And without one word spoke Had a peach from the tree, And 'twixt earnest and joke Enjoyed the lady.
William Blake -
Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with ignorance.
William Blake -
I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow, And 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-forg'd manacles I hear. How the Chimney-sweeper's cry Every black'ning Church appalls; And the hapless Soldier's sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls. But most thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot's curse Blasts the new born Infant's tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
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