"I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear To lean in joy upon our Father's knee; And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him and he will then love me."

"A truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent."

"My Brother starv'd between two Walls, His Children's Cry my Soul appalls;"

"Man was made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine."

"And throughout all eternity I forgive you, you forgive me."

"I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me: Lo! we are One; forgiving all Evil; Not seeking recompense!"

"It may seem to be a long way from Blake's innocent talk of love and copulation to De Sade's need to inflict pain. And yet both are the outcome of a sexual mysticism that strives to transcend the everyday world. Simone de Beauvoir said penetratingly of De Sade's work that 'he is trying to communicate an experience whose distinguishing characteristic is, nevertheless its will to remain incommunicable'. De Sade's perversion may have sprung from his dislike of his mother or of other women, but its basis is a kind of distorted religious emotion."

"Most scientists would make very hard work of explaining how the concept of soul fits into the material universe, where there is nothing but "atoms and the void." Was this what Blake meant when he said that science was a tree of death? The death of religion? Of imagination? Both have been frequently suggested. ...Science is certainly our prime weapon against superstition and irrationalism, but in a world in which science flourishes—with or without God—love and fear remain, as do pleasure and regret, poetry and humor, art and music. The arts are not lessened by the sciences. Blake was mistaken: man's ineradicable gift, his questing curiosity, the divine discontent, is the common source of the arts and sciences."

"Freud was frank to admit that Romantic artists like Blake had discovered the unconscious before he had. But... he could hardly adopt Blake's unsettling view of the scientific psyche."

"Re-claiming, contextualizing, and interpreting their memories remain the historians' tasks. I am reminded of a line in William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"-"To see a world in a grain of sand.""

"think: poems fixed this landscape: Blake, Donne, Keats"

""I was angry with my friend,/I told my wrath, my wrath did end./I was angry with my foe,/I told it not, my wrath did grow." As an angry child, often urged to "curb my temper," I used to ponder those words of William Blake, but they slid first into my memory through their repetitions of sound, their ominous rhythms."

"In the modern world, the Romantics were the last major cultural movement to assert the "truth of the imagination," defending art as a way of knowing the world that equalled or surpassed scientific reason. In their resistance to what Blake called "Satan's Mathematik Holiness," their goal was not to reject science but to enlarge it. ...the Romantics sought to understand by augmentation."

"Blake deeply admired science; he never failed to portray it heroically. But he was concerned that science saw the universe from an odd angle that hid as much as it revealed. Science screened the value of things, the beauty of things, the sacredness of things as if these qualities might not really be there. Blake called this Single Vision, and contrasted it with his ideal Fourfold vision: an understanding that included the poetic, the sensuous, and the visionary along with the rational. ...he fervently prayed for our culture to be saved from the scientist's severe abbreviation of reality: "God us keep from Single Vision and Newton's Sleep.""

"Sing louder around To the bells' cheerful sound, While our sports shall be seen On the ecchoing green."

"Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly bright."

"And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear."

"They suppose that Woman's Love is Sin; in consequence all the Loves & Graces with them are Sin."

"Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a Lamb." So I piped with merry cheer; "Piper, pipe that song again." So I piped; he wept to hear."

"My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light."

"Active Evil is better than Passive Good."

"Damn sneerers!"

"True superstition is ignorant honesty & this is beloved of god and man."

"How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you! The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few!"

"And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love, And these black bodies and this sunburnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove."

"My silks and fine array, My smiles and languished air, By love are driv'n away; And mournful lean Despair Brings me yew to deck my grave: Such end true lovers have."

"Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe, After night I do crowd, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east, From whence comforts have increased; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain."

"Forgiveness of enemies can only come upon their repentance."

"He loves to sit and hear me sing, Then, laughing, sports and plays with me; Then stretches out my golden wing, And mocks my loss of liberty."

"There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness."

"If a thing loves, it is infinite."

"The true method of knowledge is experiment."

"Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more."

"Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? Or Love in a golden bowl?"

"How sweet I roamed from field to field, And tasted all the summer's pride, Till I the prince of love beheld, Who in the sunny beams did glide!"

"On a fair prospect some have looked, And felt, as I have heard them say, As if the moving time had been A thing as steadfast as the scene On which they gazed themselves away."

"The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart; he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky!"

"A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more."

"The common growth of Mother Earth Suffices me,—her tears, her mirth, Her humblest mirth and tears."

"There's something in a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon; But through the clouds I'll never float Until I have a little Boat, Shaped like the crescent-moon."

"Thought and theory must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory."

"Minds that have nothing to confer Find little to perceive."

"How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold."

"One solace yet remains for us who came Into this world in days when story lacked Severe research, that in our hearts we know How, for exciting youth's heroic flame, Assent is power, belief the soul of fact."

"Small service is true service while it lasts. Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one: The daisy, by the shadow that it casts, Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun."

"Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour Have passed away; less happy than the one That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove The tender charm of poetry and love."

"These feeble and fastidious times."

"Ocean is a mighty harmonist."

"Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart"

"Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!"