William Blake Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. A truth that's told with bad intentBeats all the lies you can invent. Auguries of Innocence

2. Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.

3. Eternity is in love with the productions of time. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

4. He who binds to himself a joyDoes the winged life destroy;But he who kisses the joy as it fliesLives in eternity's sun rise.

5. He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

6. If a thing loves, it is infinite.

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

8. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

9. What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

10. 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.

11. A Robin Redbreast in a CagePuts all Heaven in a Rage.A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeonsShudders Hell thro’ all its regions.A Dog starv’d at his Master’s GatePredicts the ruin of the State.A Horse misus’d upon the RoadCalls to Heaven for Human blood.Each outcry of the hunted HareA fiber from the Brain does tear.

12. Art is the Tree of Life, Science is the Tree of Death.

13. But to go to school in a summer morn,O! It drives all joy away;Under a cruel eye outworn,The little ones spend the dayIn sighing and dismay.

14. excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand. William Blake

15. He who replies to words of doubtdoth put the light of knowledge out. Auguries of Innocence

16. I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create. Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion

17. Imagination, the real and eternal world of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow. What is the life of Man but Art and Science? Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion

18. Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: In Full Color

19. London I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls But most thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse. Songs of Innocence and of Experience

20. May God us keepFrom Single vision and Newton's sleep.

21. The Garden of LoveI 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. Songs of Innocence and of Experience

22. The lamb misused breeds public strifeAnd yet forgives the butcher's knife.

23. The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: In Full Color

24. 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.

25. Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness/ Which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment. Milton a Poem

26. 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. Auguries of Innocence

27. Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.

28. What is now proved was once only imagined.

29. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: In Full Color