William Blake - Human Quotes

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Poetry fettered fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed, or flourish, in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish!

William Blake
Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.

William Blake
A DIVINE IMAGE Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine, And Secresy the human dress. The human dress is forged iron, The human form a fiery forge, The human face a furnace sealed, The human heart its hungry gorge.

William Blake
I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

William Blake
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.

William Blake
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

William Blake
You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue & you cannot have Moral Virtue without the Slavery of that half of the Human Race who hate what you call Moral Virtue

William Blake
Without contraries there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are necessary to human existence.

William Blake
The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.

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
The ancient poets animated all objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.

William Blake
The wild deer, wand'ring here and there, Keeps the Human Soul from Care.

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

William Blake