William Blake Quotes
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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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In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
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You become what you behold.
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Demonstration, similitude & harmony are objects of reasoning. Invention, identity & melody are objects of intuition.
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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 Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.
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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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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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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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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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The Whole Business of Man is The Arts, & All Things Common.
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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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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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I care not whether a man is good or evil; all that I care / Is whether he is a wise man or a fool. Go! put off holiness, / And put on intellect.
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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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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 hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
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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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Without contraries there is no progression.
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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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Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
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If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.