Quotations Of Blake Essay, Research Paper

Quotations of William Blake

(1757-1827)

from Annotations to Lavater, 1788 (age 31)

Damn sneerers!

True superstition is ignorant honesty & this is beloved of god and man.

Forgiveness of enemies can only come upon their repentance.

Active Evil is better than Passive Good.

They suppose that Woman’s Love is Sin; in consequence all the Loves & Graces with them are Sin.

from Annotations to Swedenborg, 1788

There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness.

If a thing loves, it is infinite.

from There Is No Natural Religion, 1788

Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.

from All Religions are One, 1788

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-93

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

How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, / Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

What is now proved was once only imagin’d.

Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.

Every thing possible to be believ’d is an image of truth.

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.

He who has suffer’d you to impose on him, knows you.

The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

If others had not been foolish, we should be so.

As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

Damn braces: Bless relaxes.

Exuberance is Beauty.

Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d.

The voice of honest indignation is the voice of God.

Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.

from the Notebook, 1793

The Question Answer’d

What is it men in women do require? The lineaments of Gratified Desire. / What is it women do in men require? The lineaments of Gratified Desire.

Lacedemonian Instruction

‘Come hither, my boy, tell me what thou seest there?’ / ‘A fool tangled in a religious snare.’

from Songs of Experience, 1789-94

Children of the future Age / Reading this indignant page, / Know that in a former time / Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.

from Annotations to Watson, 1798

The Man who pretends to be a modest enquirer into the truth of a self evident thing is a Knave.

from the Notebook, 1800-03

When a Man has Married a Wife he finds out whether / Her Knees & elbows are only glued together

from Ms Notebook, 1808-11

To God

If you have form’d a Circle to go into, / Go into it yourself & see how you would do.