William Blake – 43 Quotes

43 Quotes by William Blake

Exuberance is beauty.

– William Blake

Opposition is true friendship.

– William Blake

Active Evil is better than Passive Good.

– William Blake

The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

– William Blake

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

– William Blake

Travelers repose and dream among my leaves.

– William Blake

Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.

– William Blake

The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.

– William Blake

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

– William Blake

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

– William Blake

Great things are done when men and mountains meet.

– William Blake

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

– William Blake

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.

– William Blake

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

– William Blake

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

– William Blake

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.

– William Blake

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

– William Blake

Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too.

– William Blake

A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.

– William Blake

Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.

– William Blake

The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel’d to heaven is no artist.

– William Blake

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

– William Blake

The hours of folly are measured by the clock but of wisdom, no clock can measure.

– William Blake

Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.

– 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

I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

– William Blake

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

– William Blake

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal the good one really does.

– William Blake

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise.

– William Blake

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.

– William Blake

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.

– William Blake

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.

– William Blake

That the Jews assumed a right exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness against them and the same will it be against Christians.

– William Blake

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

– William Blake

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

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.

– William Blake

The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose.

– 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.

– 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

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

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.

– William Blake

What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!

– William Blake

Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser’s passion, not the thief s.

– William Blake