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
When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.
—William Blake
Topics: Enemies, Enemy
The cut worm forgives the plow.
—William Blake
Topics: Forgiveness
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.
—William Blake
Topics: Liberty
Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache; do be my enemy for friendship’s sake.
—William Blake
Topics: Friendship
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
—William Blake
Topics: Fame
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
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
—William Blake
Topics: Friendship
The errors of a wise man make your rule, Rather than the perfections of a fool.
—William Blake
Topics: Mistakes
Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.
—William Blake
Topics: Thought, Truth, Reason
Energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy. Energy is eternal delight.
—William Blake
Topics: Energy, Health
Naught can deform the human race Like to the armor’s iron brace.
—William Blake
Topics: Man
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only.
—William Blake
Topics: Angels
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
—William Blake
Topics: Pride
He who desires but does not act, breeds pestilence.
—William Blake
Topics: Desires, Desire
Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public Records to be true.
—William Blake
Topics: Bureaucracy
Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
—William Blake
Topics: Art
To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but immediately to the understanding or reason?
—William Blake
Topics: Imagination
Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.
—William Blake
Topics: Punishment
The forms of all things are derived from their genius.
—William Blake
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.
—William Blake
Topics: Fun, Pleasure
Embraces are cominglings from the head even to the feet, and not a pompous high priest entering by a secret place.
—William Blake
Topics: Love, Sex
Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens.
—William Blake
Topics: Humanity
Gratitude is heaven itself.
—William Blake
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
—William Blake
Topics: Intelligence, Cunning
Each outcry of the hunted hare A fiber from the brain doth tear.
—William Blake
Topics: Animals
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
—William Blake
Topics: Enemy, One liners, Friendship, Forgiveness
Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.
—William Blake
Topics: Poverty
As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.
—William Blake
Topics: Vision, Prophecy
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.
—William Blake
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
—William Blake
Topics: Busy
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
William Hogarth English Painter, Engraver
Coventry Patmore English Poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley English Poet
William Wordsworth English Poet
John Gay English Poet, Dramatist
Samuel Taylor Coleridge English Poet
Bernard Mandeville British Writer
Francis Thompson English Poet
Edmund Spenser English Poet
Philip James Bailey English Poet