The Complete Poetry and Prose Quotes

“The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“That which can be made Explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels.”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“To create a little flower is the labor of ages.”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“Praise is the practice of Art.”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“I will not endure this thing! I alone withstand to death,
This outrage! Ah me! how sick & pale you all stand round me!
Ah me! pitiable ones! do you also go the deaths vale?
All you my Friends & Brothers! all you my beloved Companions!
Have you also caught the infection of Sin & stern Repentance?
I see Disease arise upon you! yet speak to me and give
Me some comfort: why do you all stand silent? I alone
Remain in permanent strength.”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“In tortures of dire coldness now a Lake of waters deep
Sweeps over thee freezing to solid still thou sitst closd up
In that transparent rock as if in joy of thy bright prison
Till overburdend with its own weight drawn out thro immensity
With a crash breaking across the horrible mass comes down
Thundring & hail & frozen iron haild from the Element
Rends thy white hair yet thou dost fixd obdurate brooding sit
Writing thy books. Anon a cloud filld with a waste of snows
Covers thee still obdurate still resolvd & writing still
Tho rocks roll oer thee tho floods pour tho winds black as the Sea
Cut thee in gashes tho the blood pours down around thy ankles
Freezing thy feet to the hard rock still thy pen obdurate
Traces the wonders of Futurity in horrible fear of the future”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“And Urizen gave life & sense by his immortal power
To all his Engines of deceit that linked chains might run
Thro ranks of war spontaneous & that hooks & boring screws
Might act according to their forms by innate cruelty
He also formed harsh instruments of sound
To grate the soul into destruction or to inflame with fury
The spirits of life to pervert all the faculties of sense
Into their own destruction if perhaps he might avert
His own despair even at the cost of every thing that breaths”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose

“And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?”
― William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose