129 Best William Blake Quotes That Inspire You to Live Your Dreams

If you are looking for some amazing William Blake quotes, stop search! You have landed at the right place. We’ve gathered a collection of William Blake love quotes for you.

William Blake was a renowned poet, painter, and printmaker from England. The London-born artist created some of history’s most famous engravings, including the Illustrations of the Book of Job. Neither his paintings nor his writings were well-received throughout his lifetime, and he spent much of his life on the verge of poverty. These William Blake quotes will help you to explore your hidden talent.

Blake had known what he wanted to do since he was a child, and his parents backed him up. When William was eleven years old, they sent him to London’s Henry Pars Drawing School for official training. We’ve gathered some fascinating and inspirational quotes by William Blake for you to enjoy.

Blake’s engravings are now considered precious treasures and are valued in the millions. In the history of poetry and the visual arts, he is now regarded as a pivotal figure. Here we’ve curated this compilation of William Blake quotes for your inspiration.

Blake put his heart and soul into his work. Blake, unlike other artists, worked on a small scale; most of his engravings and paintings are only a few inches tall, yet the detail is stunning.

The top William Blake quotes are shown below, and they cover topics such as love, imagination, wisdom, and many others.

Best William Blake Quotes of All Time

William Blake was a Romantic-era English poet. William Blake was a painter as well. His painting style was regarded as modern art. In this category, we’ve gathered some best William Blake best quotes to get know how about his perception of work and life.

1. Man was made for joy and woe, and when this we rightly know through the world we safely go. –William Blake
2. 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. –William Blake
3. There is a smile of love, and there is a smile of deceit, and there is a smile of smiles in which these two smiles meet. –William Blake
4. 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
5. I have no name: I am but two days old. What shall I call thee? I happy am, Joy is my name. Sweet joy befall thee! –William Blake
6. Can I see a falling tear, and not feel my sorrow’s share? Can a father see his child weep, nor be with sorrow filled? Can a mother sit and hear an infant groan, an infant fear? No, no! Never can it be! Never, never can it be! –William Blake
7. 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. –William Blake
8. 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. –William Blake
9. The essentials to happiness are something to love, something to do, and something to hope for. –William Blake
10. Eternity is in love with the productions of time. –William Blake
11. Pity would be no more, if we did not make somebody poor. Mercy no more could be, if all were happy as we. –William Blake

Famous William Blake Quotes

William Blake’s favorite writing style can be classified as mystical romanticism. He is known as one of Britain’s best poets and a great painter UK has ever produced. In this section, we’ve assembled some famous quotes by William Blake for you.

1. No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. –William Blake
2. Great things are done when men and mountains meet. –William Blake
3. A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. –William Blake
4. Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. –William Blake
5. The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. –William Blake
6. The man who does not believe in miracles surely makes it certain that he will never take part in one. –William Blake
7. 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
8. If the sun and the moon should every doubt, they’d immediately go out. –William Blake
9. A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there’s more conversation. –William Blake
10. 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
11. For mercy has a human heart pity, a human face: and love, the human form divine, and peace, the human dress. –William Blake

Wise William Blake Quotes

Blake showed early aptitude as an artist before honing his skills by wandering the streets of London drawing whatever he came across. He was quickly perceived as a strong-willed man who would certainly achieve great things in his life, regardless of the challenges he faced. Below, we have gathered few best wise William Blake quotes for you.

1. You throw the sand against the wind and the wind blows it back again. –William Blake
2. I care not whether a man is good or evil; all that I care / Is whether he is a wise man or a fool. Go! Put off holiness, / And put on intellect. –William Blake
3. How can a bird that is born for joy sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, but drop his tender wing, and forget his youthful spring? –William Blake
4. 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
5. The crow wished everything was black, the owl, that everything was white. –William Blake
6. To some people a tree is something incredibly beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes. To others it is just a green thing that stands in the way. –William Blake
7. 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. –William Blake
8. 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
9. Angels are happier than men and devils, because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another, and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan’s gratification. –William Blake
10. The rage of the lion is the wisdom of god. –William Blake

InspirationalWilliam Blake Quotes

Blake is said to have seen visions as a child, and this was a foreshadowing of things to come later in his life as he sought inspiration for his art. Here are some most famous inspirational William Blake quotes to get you inspired.

1. If the doors of perception were cleansed everything 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
2. You’ve always had the power right there in your shoes, you just had to learn it for yourself. –William Blake
3. Make your own rules or be a slave to another man’s. –William Blake
4. In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. –William Blake
5. Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you. –William Blake
6. The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. –William Blake
7. Enthusiastic admiration is the first principle of knowledge and the last. –William Blake
8. Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are the roads of genius. –William Blake
9. 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
10. Coloring does not depend on where the colors are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on form and outline on where that is put. –William Blake
11. Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night. –William Blake
12. The busy bee has no time for sorrow. –William Blake

William Blake Quotes on Love

William Blake was a renowned painter and poet in the 18th century who wrote one of the most significant collections of poems in the English canon. Check out this collection of William Blake quotes about love. These William Blake love quotes will help you to understand the true essence of love.

1. 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. –William Blake
2. And we are put on this earth a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love. –William Blake
3. Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. –William Blake
4. I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love. –William Blake
5. Love is weak when there is more doubt than there is trust, but love is most strong when you learn to trust even with all the doubts. If a thing loves, it is infinite. –William Blake
6. If a thing loves, it is infinite. –William Blake
7. Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too. –William Blake
8. Love is the child that breathes our breath. Love is the child that scatters death. –William Blake
9. Never seek to tell thy love. Love that never told can be; For the gentle wind does move. Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart; Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears—Ah, she doth depart. Soon as she was gone from me a traveler came by silently, invisibly—Oh, was no deny. –William Blake
10. Children of the future age reading this indignant page know that in a former time love, sweet love, was thought a crime. –William Blake
11. When thought is closed in caves, then love will show its roots in deepest hell. –William Blake
12. I 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. –William Blake

William Blake Quotes on Success

Blake, who went mostly unnoticed during his lifetime, is now regarded as a pivotal figure in the history of Romantic poetry and visual art. You will be inspired by these William Blake quotes on success. They are notable in that they reflect some of the deepest concepts about the success one could find among English poets.

1. You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them. –William Blake
2. You become what you behold. –William Blake
3. Without unceasing practice nothing can be done. Practice is art. If you leave off you are lost. –William Blake
4. 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. –William Blake
5. I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create. –William Blake
6. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. –William Blake
7. Pride is a personal commitment. It is an attitude which separates excellence from mediocrity. –William Blake
8. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. –William Blake
9. The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. –William Blake
10. He whose face gives no light shall never become a star. –William Blake

William Blake Quotes about Art

Blake drew many Greek artifacts while roaming the streets of London as a budding student, and his passion in classical art lasted throughout his life. In this section, we’ve collected some best William Blake quotes about art to inspire you.

1. Am not I a fly like thee? Or art not thou a man like me? –William Blake
2. Art can never exist without Naked beauty display’d. –William Blake
3. Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death. –William Blake
4. When nations grow old, the arts grow cold, and commerce settles on every tree. –William Blake
5. The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose. –William Blake
6. Poetry, painting & music, the three powers in man of conversing with paradise, which the flood did not sweep away. –William Blake
7. First thought is best in Art, second in other matters. –William Blake
8. 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. –William Blake
9. The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel’d to heaven is no artist. –William Blake
10. Works of art can only be produced in perfection where the man is either in affluence or is above the care of it. –William Blake
11. Harmony of coloring is destructive of art? It is like the smile of a fool. –William Blake

William Blake Quotes about Friendship

Perhaps the legends of the time opened Blake’s eyes to how an artist could be effective in a variety of various artistic mediums, including architecture and literature. In this category, we have gathered some best William Blake quotes on friendship.

1. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. –William Blake
2. Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: Do be my enemy for friendship’s sake. –William Blake
3. The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. –William Blake
4. Opposition is true friendship. –William Blake
5. When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend. –William Blake
6. 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
7. I 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. –William Blake
8. O god, protect me from my friends, that they have not power over me. Thou hast giv’n me power to protect myself from thy bitterest enemies. –William Blake
9. I looked for my soul but my soul I could not see. I looked for my god but my god eluded me. I looked for a friend and then I found all three. –William Blake
10. He who loves his enemies betrays his friends. This surely is not what Jesus meant. –William Blake

William Blake Quoteson Life

Though he is likely better known as a poet than an artist, William Blake’s life and work serve as a model for our current idea of what a modern artist is and does in many respects. Below we have plucked some amazing William Blake quotes on life for you.

1. Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life. –William Blake
2. He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy, but he who kisses the joy as it flies. Lives in eternity’s sunrise. –William Blake
3. This life’s dim windows of the soul Distorts the heavens from pole to pole and leads you to believe a lie When you see with, not through, the eye. –William Blake
4. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them. –William Blake
5. For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life. –William Blake
6. This life’s dim windows of the soul distorts the heavens from pole to pole and leads you to believe a life when you see with, not through the eye. –William Blake
7. In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors. –William Blake
8. 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
9. Do what you will, this world’s a fiction and is made up of contradiction. –William Blake
10. Everything that lives, lives not alone nor for itself. –William Blake

William Blake Quotes about Death

Blake claims that sketching from life has always been repulsive to him, and that it looks more like death or smells like death. Let’s glance over this list of William Blake quotes on death to know about his ideas about death.

1. Death is terrible, tho’ borne on angels’ wings! –William Blake
2. Prepare your hearts for death’s cold hand! Prepare your souls for flight, your bodies for the earth; Prepare your arms for glorious victory; Prepare your eyes to meet a holy God! Prepare, prepare! –William Blake
3. Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire. –William Blake
4. Death was not, but eternal life sprung. –William Blake
5. Death is terrible, tho’ borne on angels’ wings! –William Blake
6. To him, perpetual thought of death was a sin. Drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead. –William Blake
7. Didst close my tongue in senseless clay and me to mortal life betray: the death of Jesus set me free. –William Blake
8. As he entered the door of death for albions sake Inspired, the long sufferings of god are not for ever there is a judgment. –William Blake
9. Terrified at non existence, for such they deemd the death of the body, los his vegetable hands outstretch’d; his right hand branching out in fibrous strength siez’d the sun; his left hand like dark roots cover’d the moon, and tore them down, cracking the heavens across from immense to immense. –William Blake
10. England! awake! awake! awake! Jerusalem thy sister calls! Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death and close her from thy ancient walls? –William Blake

William Blake Quotesabout Imagination

Blake lived in relative poverty due to his lack of commercial success, a life devoted to a very individual, sometimes revolutionary, imaginative vision. Here we have collected some best William Blake quotes about imagination to know his ideas about imagination in his art and life.

1. One power alone makes a poet: Imagination. The divine vision. –William Blake
2. Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow. –William Blake
3. What is now proved was once only imagined. –William Blake
4. The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself. –William Blake
5. What is now proved was once only imagined. –William Blake
6. The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated [i.e.Mortal] body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the eternal realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature. –William Blake
7. 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
8. Everything to be imagined is an image of truth. –William Blake
9. Nature has no outline. Imagination has. –William Blake
10. 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. –William Blake
11. In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth, and all you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow. –William Blake

More William Blake Quotes and Sayings

Blake’s work was championed by a small, devoted group of followers, despite the fact that it was overlooked by his contemporaries and ignored by academic institutions of the day. Check out these amazing William Blake sayings that might inspire you.

1. For I dance and drink and sing, till some blind hand shall brush my wing. If thought is life and strength and breath and the want of thought is death then am I a happy fly if I live or if I die. –William Blake
2. The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. –William Blake
3. I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life. –William Blake
4. The hills tell each other, and the listening valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned up to thy holy feet visit our clime. Come o’er the eastern hills and let our winds kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste Thy morn and evening breath. Scatter thy pearls upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee. –William Blake
5. The worship of god is, honoring his gifts in other men each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best; those who envy or calumniate great men hate god, for there is no other god. –William Blake
6. 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! –William Blake
7. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies & chambers filled with books & pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life; and whose works are the delight & study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality? –William Blake
8. Thinking as I do that the creator of this world is a very cruel being & being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: “the son, o how unlike the father!” First god almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it. –William Blake
9. A divine image cruelty has a human heart, and jealousy a human face; terror the human form divine, and secresy the human dress. the human dress is forged iron, the human form a fiery forge, the human face a furnace sealed, the human heart its hungry gorge. –William Blake
10. I rest not from my great task! To open the eternal worlds, to open the immortal eyes of man inwards into the worlds of thought: into eternity ever expanding in the bosom of god, the human imagination. –William Blake
11. The spirits of the air live on the smells of fruit; and joy, with pinions light, roves round the gardens, or sits singing in the trees.” thus sang the jolly autumn as he sat; then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load. –William Blake

Final Thoughts on William Blake Quotes

We sincerely hope you enjoy these William Blake quotes and that they provide you with food for thought. To achieve what William Blake did, he needed a strong, self-assured personality who could promote his own work without ever questioning his radical beliefs and artistic techniques.

Blake was clearly a sophisticated thinker, occasionally flirting with revolutionary cults when he was dissatisfied with society’s accepted norms.

Our collection of William Blake love quotes will also serve to highlight his vivacious personality.

Some have referred to Blake’s art as Neo-Classical since it so closely resembles the classic style, but with content greatly influenced by biblical passages. His circle of ties varied over time as tastes in the UK and worldwide altered. We recommend reading these inspirational quotes by William Blake if you want to learn more about the amazing guru’s life and work.

This collection of William Blake quotes is an awesome brief on topics like perception doorways, mysticism, and imagination.