William blake quotes

The busy bee has no time for sorrow.

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

Why stand we here trembling around, calling on God for help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells?

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

I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.

I see through my eyes, not with them.

Shame is pride's cloak.

In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth, And all you behold, though it appears without, It is within, in your imagination, Of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.

Mans desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceived.

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

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

Poetry, Painting & Music, the three Powers in man of conversing with Paradise, which the flood did not sweep away.

There is no mistake so great as the mistake of not going on.

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.

In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.

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

To generalize is to be an idiot.

Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.

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

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

The world of imagination is the world of eternity.

Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens.

We are here to learn to endure the beams of love

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

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

Exuberance is beauty.

Knowledge is Life with wings

The Woman that does not love your Frowns Will never embrace your smiles.

He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

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.

We are led to believe a lie When we see not through the eye.

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

Expect poison from the standing water.

Mysteries are not to be solved. They eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.

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.

There is a smile of love, And there is a smile of deceit, And there is a smile of smiles In which these two smiles meet.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

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

The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.

To some people a tree is something so incredibly beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes. To others it is just a green thing that stands in the way.

Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with ignorance.

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

Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.

As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me.

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine.

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

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

Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night.

A DIVINE IMAGE Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine, And Secresy the human dress. The human dress is forged iron, The human form a fiery forge, The human face a furnace sealed, The human heart its hungry gorge.

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

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

As a man is, so he sees.

You become what you behold.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

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

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

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

The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.

Every mortal loss is an immortal gain.

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 a thing loves, it is infinite.

General knowledges are those knowledges that idiots possess.

As we are, so we see.

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

Every harlot was a virgin once.

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

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

A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation.

Execution is the chariot of genius.

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

Celebrate your existence!

The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

What is it men in women do require: The lineaments of gratified desire. What is it women do in men require: The lineaments of gratified desire.

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

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.

The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated [i.e. mortal] body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the eternal realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature.

Everything to be imagined is an image of truth.

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

Do what you will this life's a fiction, And is made up of contradiction.

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.

Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?

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?

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

They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.

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

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

God is the poetic genius in each of us.

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

He who kisses joy as it flies by will live in eternity's sunrise.

Gratitude, in itself, is heaven.

The person who does not believe in miracles surely makes it certain that he or she will never take part in one.

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.

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

You've always had the power right there in your shoes, you just had to learn it for yourself.

Error is created; truth is eternal.

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.

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

Love is weak when there is more doubt than there is trust, but love is most strong when you learn to trust even with all the doubts. If a thing loves, it is infinite.

He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God.

Great things are done when men and mountains meet.

Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

Active Evil is better than Passive Good.

If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

Work up imagination to the state of vision.

Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.

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?

Love to faults is always blind, always is to joy inclined. Lawless, winged, and unconfined, and breaks all chains from every mind.

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

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

To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.

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.

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

When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.

We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them.

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.

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

Make your own rules or be a slave to another man's.