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William Blake Quotes (1757-1827)
Poet, Painter
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About William Blake
William Blake (November 28 1757 β August 12 1827) was an English poet, Christian mystic, painter, printmaker, and engraver.
Best William Blake Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful William Blake quotes.
βExuberance is Beauty.β
βEver Weeping Paddington...β
βOpposition is true Friendship.β
βHalf Friendship is the bitterest Enmity...β
βHe who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.β
βThis world of imagination is the world of eternity.β
βThe Old & New Testaments are / the Great Code of Art.β
βWhy art thou silent and invisible,
Father of Jealousy?β
Father of Jealousy?β
βForgiveness of enemies can only come upon their repentance.β
William Blake Quotes by Topic
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William Blake on Angels 6 quotes
View all 6 quotes on Angels →William Blake on Infinity 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Infinity →William Blake on Time 3 quotes
βEternity is in love with the productions of time.β
William Blake on Heaven 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Heaven →William Blake on Joy 3 quotes
βMan was made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go.β
William Blake on Idiot 3 quotes
βDegrade first the arts if you'd mankind degrade, Hire idiots to paint with cold light and hot shade.β
William Blake on Eternity 2 quotes
βEternity is in love with the productions of time.β
William Blake on Fools 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Fools →William Blake on Trees 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Trees →William Blake on Love 2 quotes
βTo Chloe's breast young Cupid slily stole, But he crept in at Myra's pocket-hole.β
William Blake on Poetry about love 2 quotes
βTo Chloe's breast young Cupid slily stole, But he crept in at Myra's pocket-hole.β
William Blake on Wealth 2 quotes
βI have mental joys and mental health, Mental friends and mental wealth, I've a wife that I love and that loves me; I've all but riches bodily.β
What William Blake Said About Others
Discover personal opinions William Blake shared regarding contemporaries.
William Blake on Maiden
βPrudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.β
William Blake on Voltaire
William Blake on John Milton
Quotes About William Blake
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about William Blake from others.
Thomas J. J. Altizer on William Blake
βWhat is most needed today is a fundamental theological thinking, one centered upon the Godhead itself, and centered upon that which is most challenging or most offensive in the Godhead, one which has truly been veiled in the modern world, except by our most revolutionary thinkers and visionaries. If we allow Blake and Nietzsche to be paradigmatic of those revolutionaries, nowhere else does such a centering upon God or the Godhead occur, although a full parallel to this occurs in Spinoza and Hegel; but the language of Hegel and Spinoza is not actually offensive, or not in its immediate impact, whereas the language of Nietzsche and Blake is the most purely offensive language which has ever been inscribed. Above all this is true of the theological language of Blake and Nietzsche, but here a theological language is a truly universal language, one occurring in every domain, and occurring as that absolute No which is the origin of every repression and every darkness, and a darkness which is finally the darkness of God, or the darkness of that Godhead which is beyond βGod.β Only Nietzsche and Blake know a wholly fallen Godhead, a Godhead which is an absolutely alien Nihil, but the full reversal of that Nihil is apocalypse itself, an apocalypse which is an absolute joy, and Blake and Nietzsche are those very writers who have most evoked that joy.β
Carl Andre on William Blake
βAnd again to quote Blake: βIt is better to murder an infant in the cradle than to nurse an ungratified desire.ββ
Max Beckmann on William Blake
β..I saw William Blake (in his dream), noble emanation of English genius... ...βHave confidence in your objects,β he said, 'do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Seek this path'.. ..I awoke and found myself in Holland in the midst of boundless world turmoil. But my belief in the final release and absolution of all things, whether they please or torment, was newly strengthened.β
Harold Bloom on William Blake
βTo me, it seems best to read Blake in company with his truest peers, Shakespeare and Milton, and with his greatest contemporaries, Wordsworth and Shelley. He was a visionary, rather than a mystic, and, like D. H. Lawrence and Sigmund Freud, he hoped to encourage us to exalt our human potential. Perhaps Blake can be best termed an apocalyptic humanist, who urges us never to forget that all deities reside in the human breast.β
Micere Githae Mugo on William Blake
βI also liked the Romantic poets. Wordsworth, Keats, Burns and Blake were some of my favourites. There was something about their rebellious spirit against the evils of industrialization that moved me. Of course now, some of their pessimism, mysticism and limited critical realist visions make me quite uncomfortable.β
Marsden Hartley on William Blake
βI learned this bit of wisdom from a principle of William Blake's which I discovered early and followed far too assiduously the first half of my aesthetic life, and from which I have happily released myself and this axiom was: "Put off intellect and put on imagination; the imagination is the man." From this doctrinal assertion evolved the theoretical axiom that you don't see a thing until you look away from it which was an excellent truism as long as the principles of the imaginative life were believed in and followed. I no longer believe in the imagination.β
Thomas Merton on William Blake
George Orwell on William Blake
βIt is not at all certain that a merely moral criticism of society may not be just as "revolutionary" β and revolution, after all, means turning things upside down β as the politico-economic criticism which is fashionable at this moment. Blake was not a politician, but there is more understanding of the nature of capitalist society in a poem like "I wander through each charter'd street" than in three-quarters of Socialist literature.β
About William Blake
William Blake (November 28 1757 β August 12 1827) was an English poet, Christian mystic, painter, printmaker, and engraver.