The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Illuminated Manuscript with the Original Illustrations

by William Blake

There are nine known copies of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the third of Blake's illuminated books. It was probably begun in 1789 and completed in 1790.

Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death. Roses are planted where thorns grow, And on the barren heath Sing the honey bees.

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer of reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.

Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

Used as the title of a fine mystery novel in 2009: Drive Your Cart Over the Bones of the Dead.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

A fool sees not the same tree that a ...

The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings. A dead body, revenges not injuries.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. Folly is the cloke of knavery. Shame is Prides cloke.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.

What is now proved was once, only imagin'd.

The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

Expect poison from the standing water.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

Exuberance is Beauty.

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius. Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

I then asked Ezekiel, why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right & left side? he answer'd, the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite; this the North American tribes practise, & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification?

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

This is the source of the title for The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley, which in turn inspired the name of the 1960s rock band The Doors.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind.

Opposition is true Friendship.

let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.

I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.

Note. This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend; we often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they behave well.

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression.

For every thing that lives is Holy.