William Blake

“No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.”

“What is now proved was once only imagined.”

“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.”

“The true method of knowledge is experiment.”

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”

“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.”

“Exuberance is beauty.”

“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”

“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 sun rise.”

“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.”

“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”

“Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.”

“Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.”

“The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel'd to heaven is no artist.”

“A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.”

“When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.”

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing 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.”

“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.”

“He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.”

“Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.”

“Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.”

“I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”

“The weak in courage is strong in cunning.”

“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.”