William Blake Quotes
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In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
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We are led to believe a lie When we see not through the eye.
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Dip him in the river who loves water.
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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.
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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.
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Demonstration, similitude & harmony are objects of reasoning. Invention, identity & melody are objects of intuition.
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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.
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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.
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The naked women's body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man.
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You become what you behold.
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Without contraries there is no progression.
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The Whole Business of Man is The Arts, & All Things Common.
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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.
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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.
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Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs and flaming hair, But desire gratified Plants fruits of life and beauty there.
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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.
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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.
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Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
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The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.
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What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.
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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.
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You smile with pomp and rigor, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue and get murdered time after time.
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The eye sees more than the heart knows.
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The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.