Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by William Blake (English Poet)

William Blake (1757–1827) was an English artist, engraver, mystical philosopher, visionary, and poet. His watercolors and engravings, like his writings, were appreciated fully only after his death. His poems denote the beginning of romanticism and a rejection of the Age of Enlightenment.

Blake was born in Soho, London, where he lived most of his life. His early childhood was dominated by spiritual visions that influenced his personal and working life. Instead of going to school, he was apprenticed to an engraver; there, he learned skills he was to use throughout his career as a poet.

In 1784, Blake set up a print shop, but the business struggled within a few years. For the rest of his life, Blake eked out a living as an engraver and illustrator. Blake always wrote out poems by hand on an engraving plate, rather than using type, engraved illustrations and hand-colored them—he was concerned with the presentation of his poetry as well as the words themselves.

Blake’s first book, Poetical Sketches, was published in 1783. He produced his most famous works, Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794,) by engraving both the words and the pictures on the same plate; this was his distinctive style. The Songs of Innocence are simple poems, written as if spoken by children. They are generally hopeful and optimistic. However, the Songs of Experience are also childlike in approach, but darker and more pessimistic. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience had sold fewer than 20 copies in 30 years.

At the time of his death, Blake was an unknown figure, best remembered for his engravings of other peoples’ work, or perhaps for his one famous poem, “The Tyger.” Among those familiar with his life’s work, the consensus was that he was insane. It wasn’t until 30 years after his death that a husband-and-wife team, Alexander and Anne Gilchrist, published a two-volume biography of Blake that firmly established him as a brilliant and vital artist.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Blake

What is now proved was only once imagined.
—William Blake
Topics: Imagination

The inquiry in England is not whether a man has talents and genius, but whether he is passive and polite and a virtuous ass and obedient to noblemen’s opinions in art and science. If he is, he is a good man. If not, he must be starved.
—William Blake
Topics: Respectability, Respect

Pay attention to minute particulars. Take care of the little ones. Generalization and abstraction are The plea of the hypocrite, scoundrel, and knave.
—William Blake
Topics: Hypocrisy

When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.
—William Blake
Topics: Enemies, Enemy

If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they’d immediately go out.
—William Blake
Topics: Doubt

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
—William Blake
Topics: Perception

Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of Heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not enter into Heaven let him be ever so holy.
—William Blake
Topics: Heaven, Understanding

To create a little flower is the labor of ages.
—William Blake
Topics: Flowers, Labor

To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess.
—William Blake

Gratitude is heaven itself.
—William Blake

All futurity seems teeming with endless destruction never to be repelled; Desperate remorse swallows the present in a quenchless rage.
—William Blake
Topics: Future, The Future

Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.
—William Blake
Topics: Happiness

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
—William Blake
Topics: Change, Thought, Opinion, Reason, Opinions

Life delights in life.
—William Blake
Topics: Happiness

What is now proved was once only imagin’d.
—William Blake
Topics: Imagination

Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
—William Blake
Topics: Mercy

The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.
—William Blake
Topics: Time

A tyrant is the worst disease, and the cause of all others.
—William Blake
Topics: Tyranny

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer; For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized particles.
—William Blake
Topics: Hypocrisy, Goodness

It is right it should be so; Man was made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go.
—William Blake
Topics: Knowledge, Acceptance

Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so? He replied, “All poets believe it does. And in ages of imagination, this firm persuasion removes mountains; but many are not capable of firm persuasion of anything”.
—William Blake
Topics: Believe

Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser’s passion, not the thief s.
—William Blake
Topics: Crime, Criminals

Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.
—William Blake
Topics: Thought, Truth, Reason

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine
Love Mercy Pity Peace.
—William Blake

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
—William Blake
Topics: Art

The bird a nest
the spider a web
the human friendship.
—William Blake
Topics: Friendship

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
—William Blake
Topics: Enemy, One liners, Friendship, Forgiveness

One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression.
—William Blake
Topics: Oppression, One liners

Great things are done when men and mountains meet; this is not done by jostling in the street.
—William Blake
Topics: Challenges

He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.
—William Blake
Topics: Secrets of Success

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