William Blake Quotes - Page 2

Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.

The lamb misused breeds public strife
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! It drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?

I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate
Built in Jerusalem's wall.

He who replies to words of doubt
doth put the light of knowledge out.

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.

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.

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

excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand.

May God us keep
From Single vision
and Newton's sleep.

If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.

Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness/ Which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment.

The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.

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

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

The following Discourse [on art, by Sir Joshua Reynolds] is particularly Interesting to Blockheads as it endeavours to prove that There is No such thing as Inspiration & that any Man of a plain Understanding may by Thieving from Others become a Mich Angelo.

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

How can a bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?