William Blake
Quotations

"Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you."

 

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

 

"Exuberance is beauty."

 

"I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's."

- Jerusalem

 

"He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:"

- Jerusalem

 

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd."

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

"He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence."

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

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

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

"To create a little flower is the labour of ages."

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind."

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

"Shame is Pride's cloak."

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings."

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

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

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

"The eye altering, alters all."

- The Mental Traveller

 

"I do not behold the outward creation... it is a hindrance and not action."

 

"I look through the eye, not with it."

 

"And now let me finish with assuring you that, Tho' I have been very unhappy, I am so no longer. I am again Emerged into the light of day; I still & shall to Eternity Embrace Christianity and Adore him who is the Express image of God; but I have travel'd thro' Perils & Darkness not unlike a Champion. I have Conquer'd, and shall go on Conquering. Nothing can withstand the fury of my course among the Stars of God & in the Abysses of the Accuser. My enthusiasm is still what it was, only Enlarged and confirmed. "

 

"Having spent the Vigour of my Youth & Genius under the Oppression of Sr Joshua & his Gang of Cunning Hired Knaves Without Employment & as much as could possibly be without Bread, The Reader must Expect to read in all my remarks on these Books Nothing but Indignation & Resentment. While Sr Joshua was rolling in Riches . . . (he) & Gainsborough Blotted & Blurred one against the other & Divided all the English World between them. Fuseli, Indignant, almost hid himself. I am hid. "

 

"The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. "