Quotes from William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand dare seize the fire?

Grown old in love from seven till seven times seven,I oft have wish'd for Hell for ease from Heaven.

When the voices of children are heard on the greenAnd laughing is heard on the hill,My heart is at rest within my breastAnd everything else is still.

Little Lamb, who made thee?Dost thou know who made thee?Gave thee life and bid thee feedBy the stream and o'er the mead;Gave thee clothing of delight,Softest clothing, woolly, bright.

As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs.

Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read'st black while I read white.

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.

He's a Blockhead who wants a proof of what he Can't Percieve And he's a Fool who tries to make such a Blockhead believe.

Little Fly, Thy summer's play My thoughtless hand Has brush'd away. Am I not A fly like thee? Or are thou not A man like me?

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 dispite.

Mutual forgiveness of each vice. Such are the Gates of Paradise.

My mother groan'd, my father wept Into the dangerous world I leapt, Helpless, naked, piping load, Like a friend hid in a cloud.

There is no idea so right that there is nothing wrong about it, And nothing so wrong that there isn't something right about it. ~William Blake~

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.

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

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?

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

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.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

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

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