Top 472 Quotes & Sayings by William Blake - Page 3

Every man who is not an artist is a traitor to his own nature.

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

If you cannot imagine with the mind's eye much more than you can see with the mortal eye, you have a very poor imagination indeed.

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

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

To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

This life's dim windows of the soul Distorts the heavens from pole to pole And leads you to believe a lie When you see with, not through, the eye.

Pride is a personal commitment. It is an attitude which separates excellence from mediocrity.

And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

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?

Work up imagination to the state of vision.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

I care not whether a man is good or evil; all that I care / Is whether he is a wise man or a fool. Go! put off holiness, / And put on intellect.

Gratitude is heaven itself; there could be no heaven without gratitude.

As a man is, so he sees.

I see the Past, Present & Future existing all at once Before me.

The world of imagination is the world of eternity.

Error is created; truth is eternal.

The naked women's body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man.

When the doors of perception are cleansed, men will see things as they truly are, infinite.

I must create a system, or be enslav'd by another man's.

thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.

Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public Records to be true.

One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination. The Divine Vision.

More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul.

The crow wished everything was black, the Owl, that everything was white.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but foresight is better, especially when it comes to saving life, or some pain!

He who has few things to desire cannot have many to fear.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

The eye sees more than the heart knows.

Mercy is the golden chain by which society is bound together.

Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: do be my enemy for friendship's sake.

Mercy, Pity, Peace Is the world's release.

Where others see but the dawn coming over the hill, I see the soul of God shouting for joy.

Why cannot the ear be closed to its own destruction? Or the glistening eye to the poison of a smile?

I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Children of the future age Reading this indignant page Know that in a former time Love, sweet love, was thought a crime

Those who enter the gates of heaven are not beings who have no passions or who have curbed the passions, but those who have cultivated an understanding of them.

I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies & chambers filled with books & pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life; and whose works are the delight & study of Archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality?

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow

Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with ignorance.

Life delights in life.

Knowledge of ideal beauty is not to be acquired. It is born with us. Innate ideas are in every man, born with him; theyare truly himself.

Execution is the chariot of genius.

Mercy, pity, and peace, Are the world's release.

For all eternity, I forgive you and you forgive me.

When nations grow old the Arts grow cold And commerce settles on every tree

All wholesome food is caught without a net or trap.

LOVE'S SECRET Never seek to tell thy love, Love that never told can be; For the gentle wind doth move Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart, Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears. Ah! she did depart! Soon after she was gone from me, A traveller came by, Silently, invisibly: He took her with a sigh.

Every mortal loss is an immortal gain.

General knowledges are those knowledges that idiots possess.

Shame is pride's cloak.

The worship of God is, Honouring his gifts in other men each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best; those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God.

He who wants, but doesn't act, is a pest.

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.

My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt.

The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar's laurel crown.

Wisdom is sold in a desolate marketplace where none can come to buy.

Everything to be imagined is an image of truth.

The moon, like a flower in heaven's high bower, with silent delight sits and smiles on the night.