William Blake Quotes

320 Sourced Quotes

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

William Blake
What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.

William Blake
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

William Blake
Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

William Blake
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

William Blake
To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun & and a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. 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 by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, So he Sees. As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers..

William Blake
Works of Art can only be produc'd in Perfection where the Man is either in Affluence or is Above the Care of it.

William Blake
Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burden'd air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

William Blake
God appears and god is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day

William Blake
Without minute neatness of execution, the sublime cannot exist! Grandeur of ideas is founded on precision of ideas.

William Blake
What is a Wife & what is a Harlot? What is a Church & What
Is a Theatre? are they Two & not One? can they Exist Separate?
Are not Religion & Politics the Same Thing? Brotherhood is Religion
O Demonstrations of Reason Dividing Families in Cruelty & Pride!

William Blake
Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The watery shore
Is given thee till the break of day.

William Blake
To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but immediately to the understanding or reason?

William Blake
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

William Blake
What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.

William Blake
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the wingèd life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.

William Blake
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.

William Blake
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from Hell a human soul.

William Blake
The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laugh'd
And all the hills echoed

William Blake
For where'er the sun does shine,
And where'er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.

William Blake
O Earth, O Earth, return! Arise from out the dewy grass; Night is worn; And the morn Rises from the slumbrous mass.

William Blake
I heard an Angel singing; When the day was springing, Mercy, Pity, Peace; Is the world's release.

William Blake
Innate ideas are in every man, born with him; they are truly himself. The man who says that we have no innate ideas must be a fool and knave, having no conscience or innate science.

William Blake
To Chloe's breast young Cupid slily stole,
But he crept in at Myra's pocket-hole.

William Blake
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

William Blake