Book detail: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake is a comprehensive compilation of the poet's writings, spanning his entire career. It features his most famous poems, such as 'The Tyger' and 'The Lamb,' as well as his lesser-known works, providing a deep insight into his creative genius and philosophical musings.
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“Execution is the chariot of genius.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“To my eye Rubens' colouring is most contemptible. His shadows are a filthy brown somewhat the colour of excrement.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Ages are All Equal. / But Genius is Always Above The Age.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Invention depends altogether upon execution or organization; as that is right or wrong so is the invention perfect or imperfect.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Death is terrible, tho' borne on angels' wings!”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“I see the Past, Present & Future existing all at once Before me.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Every tear from every eyeBecomes a babe in eternity.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“O God, protect me from my friends, that they have not power over me.
Thou hast giv'n me power to protect myself from thy bitterest enemies.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Since the French Revolution Englishmen are all intermeasurable one by another, certainly a happy state of agreement to which I forone do not agree.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“All the destruction in Christian Europe has arisen from deism, which is natural religion.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“The eye sees more than the heart knows.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“The Britons (say historians) were naked, civilized men, learned, studious, abstruse in thought and contemplation; naked, simple, plain in their acts and manners; wiser than after ages.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Poetry, Painting & Music, the three Powers in man of conversing with Paradise, which the flood did not sweep away.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Art degraded, Imagination denied.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after death of the vegetative body.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Demonstration, similitude & harmony are objects of reasoning. Invention, identity & melody are objects of intuition.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“The mocker of Art is the mocker of Jesus.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Without minute neatness of execution, the sublime cannot exist! Grandeur of ideas is founded on precision of ideas.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“The true method of knowledge is experiment.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“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.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“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.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“When nations grow old the Arts grow cold And commerce settles on every tree”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“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.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness Which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal torment.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest, And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe; And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“The ruins of time build mansions in eternity.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“I rest not from my great task! | To open the Eternal Worlds, | to open the immortal Eyes of Man | Inwards into the Worlds of Thought; | Into eternity, ever expanding | In the Bosom of God, | The Human Imagination”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“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.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“As a man is, so he sees.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with ignorance.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“My silks and fine array, My smiles and languished air, By love are driv'n away And mournful lean Despair Brings me yew to deck my grave: Such end true lovers have.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination. The Divine Vision.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“I cry, Love! Love! Love! happy happy Love! free as the mountain wind!”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. To suppose that art can go beyond the finest specimens of art that are now in the world is not knowing what art is; it is being blind to the gifts of the spirit.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Why stand we here trembling around, calling on God for help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells?”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“He who pretends to be either painter or engraver without being a master of drawing is an imposter.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake
“Mans desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceived.”
Source: The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake