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
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
Every harlot was a virgin once.
The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
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.
The eye altering, alters all.
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
Travelers repose and dream among my leaves.
Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
The cistern contains: The fountain overflows.
First thought is best in Art, second in other matters.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
I see through my eyes, not with them.
Nature in darkness groans and men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night: restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words of stern philosophy and knead the bread of knowledge with tears and groans.