Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.
— William Blake
Christ's crucifix shall be made an excuse for executing criminals.
Opposition is true friendship.
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.
The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
Active Evil is better than Passive Good.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
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.
A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?
For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.
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!
Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
Love to faults is always blind, always is to joy inclined. Lawless, winged, and unconfined, and breaks all chains from every mind.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
If a thing loves, it is infinite.
I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
Travelers repose and dream among my leaves.
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.
As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.
I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.
What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.
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.
Every harlot was a virgin once.
When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.
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.
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.
Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
The eye altering, alters all.
The soul of sweet delight, can never be defiled.
Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.
One thought fills immensity.
The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.
Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity.
Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
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.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
