50 Famous William Blake Quotes
Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry, and his work has only grown in popularity. In his Life of William Blake (1863) Alexander Gilchrist warned his readers that Blake “neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for work’y-day men at all, rather for children and angels; himself ‘a divine child,’ whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth.” Yet Blake himself believed that his writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a majority of his peers.
8 William Blake Quotes About Love
- “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.”
- “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”
- “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”
- “If a thing loves, it is infinite.”
- “Great things are done when men and mountains meet.”
- “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.”
- “Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too.”
10 William Blake Quotes About Imagination
- “What is now proved was once only imagined.”
- “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.”
- “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
- “Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”
- “As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.”
- “The man who never in his mind and thoughts traveled to heaven is no artist.”
- “Travelers repose and dream among my leaves.”
- “One thought fills immensity.”
- “The soul of sweet delight, can never be defiled.”
- “The eye altering alters all.”
10 William Blake Quotes About Wisdom
- “The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”
- “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
- “The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.”
- “The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”
- “In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.”
- “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.”
- “To generalize is to be an idiot.”
- “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.”
- “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”
- “The true method of knowledge is an experiment.”
5 William Blake Quotes About Friendship
- “Opposition is true friendship.”
- “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.”
- “No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.”
- “It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”
- “I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.”
4 William Blake Quotes About Death
- “Can I see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another’s grief, and not seek for kind relief?”
- “Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.”
- “Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire.”
- “Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.”
13 William Blake, More Quotes And Sayings
- “Exuberance is beauty.”
- “For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.”
- “He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.”
- “Do what you will, this world’s a fiction and is made up of contradiction.”
- “If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they’d immediately go out.”
- “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 sunrise.”
- “Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not breeds pestilence.”
- “A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.”
- “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.”
- “Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.”
- “I have no name: I am but two days old. What shall I call thee? I happy am, Joy is my name. Sweet joy befall thee!”
- “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”
- “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.”
