William Blake Quotes: 40

• 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.

• To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.

  Auguries of Innocence

• Opposition is true friendship.

• It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

• Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.

• A truth that's told with bad intentBeats all the lies you can invent.

  Auguries of Innocence

• If a thing loves, it is infinite.

• I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.

• Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

• 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 some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

• What is now proved was once only imagined.

• I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

  Jerusalem

• The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

• The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.

• Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

• You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

• Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.

• He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

• If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite.

• A man can't soar too high, when he flies with his own wings.

• Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.

  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

• He who binds to himself a joyDoes the winged life destroy;But he who kisses the joy as it fliesLives in eternity's sun rise.

• Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.

• To see a World in a grain of sand,And a Heaven in a wild flower,Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,And Eternity in an hour.

  Auguries of Innocence

• Exuberance is beauty.

• For every thing that lives is Holy.

  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

• A Robin Redbreast in a CagePuts all Heaven in a Rage.A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeonsShudders Hell thro’ all its regions.A Dog starv’d at his Master’s GatePredicts the ruin of the State.A Horse misus’d upon the RoadCalls to Heaven for Human blood.Each outcry of the hunted HareA fiber from the Brain does tear.

• 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.

• If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.

• The lamb misused breeds public strifeAnd yet forgives the butcher's knife.

• When the stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

  Songs of Innocence and of Experience

• What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

• He who replies to words of doubtdoth put the light of knowledge out.

  Auguries of Innocence

• How can the bird that is born for joySit in a cage and sing?How can a child, when fears annoy,But droop his tender wing,And forget his youthful spring?

  Songs of Innocence and of Experience

• excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand.

  William Blake

• And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

  Songs of Innocence and of Experience

• May God us keepFrom Single vision and Newton's sleep.

• The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

• Man has no Body distinct from his soul; for that called Body is a portion of a Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

• Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.