William Blake Quotes
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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.
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May God us keep From Single vision and Newton's sleep.
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Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold, But the Ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm.
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I am going to that country which I have all my life wished to see.
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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?
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Then the Parson might preach, & drink, & sing, And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring; And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church, Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.
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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.
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Children of the future age Reading this indignant page Know that in a former time Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.
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The fields from Islington to Marybone, To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood, Were builded over with pillars of gold; And there Jerusalem's pillars stood.
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To my eye Rubens' colouring is most contemptible. His shadows are a filthy brown somewhat the colour of excrement.
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My Brother starv'd between two Walls, His Children's Cry my Soul appalls.
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The Bat that flits at close of Eve Has left the Brain that won't believe. The Owl that calls upon the Night Speaks the Unbeliever's fright.
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If you, who are organised by Divine Providence for spiritual communion, refuse, and bury your talent in the earth, even though you should want natural bread, sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after death shame and confusion of face to eternity.
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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.
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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.
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When Sir Joshua Reynolds died All Nature was degraded; The King dropped a tear in the Queen's ear, And all his pictures faded.
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A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation.
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A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
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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.
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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.
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Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy? Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?
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The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.
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'Come hither, my boy, tell me what thou seest there?' 'A fool tangled in a religious snare.'
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The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.