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
Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.
I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.
Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
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.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
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.
Exhuberance is Beauty.
If you cannot imagine with the mind's eye much more than you can see with the mortal eye, you have a very poor imagination indeed.
On no other ground Can I sow my seed Without tearing up Some stinking weed.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.