Quotes by William Blake
Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white.
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only.
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Some say that happiness is not good for mortals, and they ought to be answered that sorrow is not fit for immortals and is utterly useless to any one; a blight never does good to a tree, and if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit, let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight.
Thou art a Man, God is no more. Thy own humanity learn to adore.
Little Boy Full of joy; Little Girl, Sweet and small;
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
You smile with pomp and rigor, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue and get murdered time after time.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness.
Tools were made and born were hands; every farmer understands.
To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt; helpless, naked, piping loud, like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Energy is eternal delight.
My mother groan'd, my father wept Into the dangerous world I leapt, Helpless, naked, piping load, Like a friend hid in a cloud.
For Mercy has a human heart, Pity, a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress.
For everything exists and not one sigh nor smile nor tear, one hair nor particle of dust, not one can pass away.
A Robin Redbreast in a cage, Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
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?
The countless gold of a merry heart,The rubies and pearls of a loving eye,The indolent never can bring to the mart,Nor the secret hoard up in his treasury.
The fields from Islington to Marybone, / To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood, / Were builded over with pillars of gold; / And there Jerusalem's pillars stood.
What now is proved was once only imagined.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.
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, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.
