William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. What he called his prophetic works were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form “what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language”. These William Blake quotes will motivate you.
Best William Blake Quotes
- “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.” ~ William Blake - “I care not whether a man is good or evil; all that I care / Is whether he is a wise man or a fool. Go! put off holiness, / And put on intellect.” ~ William Blake
- “In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.” ~ William Blake
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“We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them.” ~ William Blake
- “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.” ~ William Blake - “What is now proved was once only imagined.” ~ William Blake
- “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.” ~ William Blake
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“Make your own rules or be a slave to another man’s.” ~ William Blake
- “The person who does not believe in miracles surely makes it certain that he or she will never take part in one.” ~ William Blake
- “As we are, so we see.” ~ William Blake
- “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” ~ William Blake
- “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.” ~ William Blake
- “The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.” ~ William Blake
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“There is no mistake so great as the mistake of not going on.” ~ William Blake
- “The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.” ~ William Blake
- “Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.” ~ William Blake
- “Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night.” ~ William Blake
- “Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public Records to be true.” ~ William Blake
- “He who kisses joy as it flies by will live in eternity’s sunrise.” ~ William Blake
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“I see through my eyes, not with them.” ~ William Blake
- “When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.” ~ William Blake
- “Celebrate your existence!” ~ William Blake
- “Why stand we here trembling around, calling on God for help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells?” ~ William Blake
- “He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God.” ~ William Blake
- “Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.” ~ William Blake
- “Gratitude, in itself, is heaven.” ~ William Blake
- “You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.” ~ William Blake
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“Every man who is not an artist is a traitor to his own nature.” ~ William Blake
- “The weak in courage is strong in cunning.” ~ William Blake
- “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?” ~ William Blake
- “Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with ignorance.” ~ William Blake
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“You become what you behold.” ~ William Blake
- “He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.” ~ William Blake
- “To generalize is to be an idiot.” ~ William Blake
- “Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.” ~ William Blake -
“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.” ~ William Blake
- “Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” ~ William Blake
- “They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.” ~ William Blake
- “Exuberance is beauty.” ~ William Blake
- “A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.” ~ William Blake
- “Do what you will this life’s a fiction, And is made up of contradiction.” ~ William Blake
- “No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.” ~ William Blake
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“The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.” ~ William Blake
- “Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.” ~ William Blake
- “You’ve always had the power right there in your shoes, you just had to learn it for yourself.” ~ William Blake
- “A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there’s more conversation.” ~ William Blake
- “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.” ~ William Blake
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“The busy bee has no time for sorrow.” ~ William Blake
- “The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar’s laurel crown.” ~ William Blake
- “Without Unceasing Practice nothing can be done. Practice is Art. If you leave off you are lost.” ~ William Blake
- “He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.” ~ William Blake
- “I must create a system, or be enslav’d by another man’s.” ~ William Blake
- “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.” ~ William Blake
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“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.” ~ William Blake
- “Great things are done when men and mountains meet.” ~ William Blake
- “Poetry, Painting & Music, the three Powers in man of conversing with Paradise, which the flood did not sweep away.” ~ William Blake
- “The Woman that does not love your Frowns Will never embrace your smiles.” ~ William Blake
- “Shame is pride’s cloak.” ~ William Blake
- “I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” ~ William Blake
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“I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.” ~ William Blake
- “Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.” ~ William Blake
- “Knowledge is Life with wings” ~ William Blake
- “As a man is, so he sees.” ~ William Blake
- “Mysteries are not to be solved. They eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.” ~ William Blake
- “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.” ~ William Blake
