William Blake Quotes
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God only acts and is, in existing beings or men.
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My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light.
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When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still.
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God is the poetic genius in each of us.
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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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If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
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THE POISON TREE I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I water'd it in fears, Night & morning with my tears; And I sunned it with my smiles And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright; And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine, And into my garden stole When the night had veil'd the pole: In the morning glad I see My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.
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He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
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The generations of men run on in the tide of time, but leave their destined lineaments permanent for ever and ever.
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[L]et light Rise from the chambers of the east, and bring The honey'd dew that cometh on waking day. O radiant morning.
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Everything is beautiful in its own way. Exuberance is beauty.
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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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Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief? Can I see a falling tear, And not feel my sorrow's share? Can a father see his child Weep, nor be with sorrow filled? Can a mother sit and hear An infant groan, an infant fear? No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!
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The spirits of the air live on the smells Of fruit; and joy, with pinions light, roves round The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.
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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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Mere enthusiasm is the all in all... / Passion and expression are beauty itself.
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Life delights in life.
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Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
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Work up imagination to the state of vision.
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On no other ground Can I sow my seed Without tearing up Some stinking weed.
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The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid, of Plato & Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible.
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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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I rest not from my great task! | To open the Eternal Worlds, | to open the immortal Eyes of Man | Inwards into the Worlds of Thought; | Into eternity, ever expanding | In the Bosom of God, | The Human Imagination
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O God, protect me from my friends, that they have not power over me. Thou hast giv'n me power to protect myself from thy bitterest enemies.