"He who desires but does not act, breeds pestilence."

Blake, William on Desire
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"Then my verse I dishonor, my pictures despise, my person degrade and my temper chastise; and the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame; and my talents I bury, and dead is my fame."

Blake, William on Despair
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"If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out."

Blake, William on Doubt
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"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."

Blake, William on Empire
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"When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend."

Blake, William on Enemies
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"Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence."

Blake, William on Energy
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"Eternity is in love with the productions of time."

Blake, William on Eternity
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"To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour."

Blake, William on Eternity
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"The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

Blake, William on Excess
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"The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar's laurel crown."

Blake, William on Fame
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"To create a little flower is the labor of ages."

Blake, William on Flowers
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"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."

Blake, William on Fools and Foolishness
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"Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache; do be my enemy for friendship's sake."

Blake, William on Friends and Friendship
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"Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth."

Blake, William on Fun
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"All futurity seems teeming with endless destruction never to be repelled; Desperate remorse swallows the present in a quenchless rage."

Blake, William on The future
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"To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit. General knowledge are those knowledge that idiots possess."

Blake, William on Generalizations
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"The generations of men run on in the tide of time, but leave their destined lineaments permanent for ever and ever."

Blake, William on Generations
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"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."

Blake, William on Altruism
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"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."

Blake, William on Angels
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"Energy is eternal delight."

Blake, William on Health
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"Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of Heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not enter into Heaven let him be ever so holy."

Blake, William on Heaven
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"Cruelty has a Human Heart, And jealousy a Human Face; Terror the Human Form Divine, And secrecy the Human Dress. The Human Dress is forged Iron, The Human Form a Fiery Forge, The Human Face a Furnace seal d, The Human Heart its hungry gorge."

Blake, William on Humankind
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"Expect poison from standing water."

Blake, William on Idleness
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"What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death."

Blake, William on Illusion
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"To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but immediately to the understanding or reason?"

Blake, William on Imagination
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"What is now proved was only once imagined."

Blake, William on Imagination
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"Every harlot was a virgin once."

Blake, William on Innocence
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"What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!"

Blake, William on Institutions
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"Thinking as I do that the Creator of this world is a very cruel being, and being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: the Son, O how unlike the Father! First God Almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it."

Blake, William on Jesus Christ
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"He who binds to himself a joy doth the winged life destroy. But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in Eternity's sunrise."

Blake, William on Joy
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"That the Jews assumed a right exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness against them and the same will it be against Christians."

Blake, William on Judaism and Jews
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"You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue."

Blake, William on Liberty
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"For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life."

Blake, William on Life and Living
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"Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

Blake, William on Love
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"The Goddess Fortune is the devil's servant, ready to kiss any one's ass."

Blake, William on Luck
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"To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes."

Blake, William on Misers and Misery
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"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."

Blake, William on Nature
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"Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed."

Blake, William on Nudity
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"What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care."

Blake, William on Obscurity
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"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind."

Blake, William on Opinions
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