Quotes By William Blake

I have no name: I am but two days old. What shall I call thee? I happy am, Joy is my name. Sweet joy befall thee!

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 heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

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

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

Lives in eternity's sun rise.

Every harlot was a virgin once.

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

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.

The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

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

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.

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

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.

Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white.

Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity.

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

If a thing loves, it is infinite.

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

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

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!

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

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.