William Blake
William Blake
William Blakewas an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic works have been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 November 1757
Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,Dreaming o'er the joys of night.Sleep, sleep: in thy sleepLittle sorrows sit and weep.
She who dwells with me whom I have loved with such communion, that no place on earth can ever be solitude to me.
He who has suffered you to impose on him knows you.
Wisdom is sold in a desolate marketplace where none can come to buy.
Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading.
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?
The mocker of Art is the mocker of Jesus.
Where any view of money exists, art cannot be carried on.
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.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds and binding with briars my joys and desires. (from 'The Garden of Love')
But to go to school in a summer morn, O! It drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn, The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay.
Knowledge is Life with wings
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.