Quotes by William Blake

"The hours of folly are measured by the clock but of wisdom, no clock can measure."

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

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

"In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy."

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

"Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Great things are done when men and mountains meet."

"Opposition is true friendship."

"The true method of knowledge is experiment."

"Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow."

"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."

"The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel'd to heaven is no artist."

"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."

"Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed."

"The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest."

"The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness."

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

"Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too."

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

"Travelers repose and dream among my leaves."

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

"To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes."

"Exuberance is beauty."

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

"That the Jews assumed a right exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness against them and the same will it be against Christians."

"Eternity is in love with the productions of time."

"He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars."

"Active Evil is better than Passive Good."

"Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser's passion, not the thief s."

"Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish."

"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."

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

"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."

"Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?"

"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."

"The weak in courage is strong in cunning."

"What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!"

"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."

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

"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."