William Blake - Art Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

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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
Without Unceasing Practice nothing can be done. Practice is Art. If you leave off you are lost.

William Blake
Rome & Greece swept Art into their maw & destroy'd it; a Warlike State never can produce Art. It will Rob & Plunder & accumulate into one place, & Translate & Copy & Buy & Sell & Criticize, but not Make.

William Blake
The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. To suppose that art can go beyond the finest specimens of art that are now in the world is not knowing what art is; it is being blind to the gifts of the spirit.

William Blake
The ignorant Insults of Individuals will not hinder me from doing my duty to my Art

William Blake
The inquiry in England is not whether a man has talents and genius, but whether he is passive and polite and a virtuous ass and obedient to noblemen's opinions in art and science. If he is, he is a good man. If not, he must be starved.

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
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
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 & then they are scattered abroad to the four winds

William Blake
It is the greatest of crimes to depress true art and science.

William Blake
When nations grow old, the Arts grow cold,
And Commerce settles on every tree.

William Blake
And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

William Blake
Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance,
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

William Blake
Degrade first the arts if you'd mankind degrade,
Hire idiots to paint with cold light and hot shade.

William Blake
Tho' thou art worshipped by the names divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Night's decline,
The lost traveller's dream under the hill.

William Blake
Art is the tree of life.
SCIENCE is the Tree of DEATH
ART is the Tree of LIFEGOD is JESUS

William Blake
Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce,
And dost not know the garment from the man.

William Blake
The Foundation of Empire is Art & Science Remove them or Degrade them & the Empire is No More — Empire follows Art & Not Vice Versa as Englishmen suppose.

William Blake
Thou art a man God is no more Thy own humanity Learn to adore

William Blake
Art can never exist without Naked Beauty displayed.

William Blake
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.

William Blake
Why art thou silent and invisible,
Father of Jealousy?

William Blake