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Excess
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The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
-William Blake
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Fame
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The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar's laurel crown.
-William Blake
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He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
-William Blake
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Flowers
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To create a little flower is the labor of ages.
-William Blake
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Fools, Foolishness
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A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
-William Blake
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Forgiveness
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It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
-William Blake, Jerusalem, 1820
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Friends
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Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache; do be my enemy for friendship's sake.
-William Blake
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Future, The
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All futurity seems teeming with endless destruction never to be repelled; Desperate remorse swallows the present in a quenchless rage.
-William Blake
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Generalize, Generalizations
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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.
-William Blake
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Generations
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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.
-William Blake
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Goodness
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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.
-William Blake
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Health
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Energy is eternal delight.
-William Blake
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Heaven
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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.
-William Blake
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Humanity
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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.
-William Blake
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Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens.
-William Blake
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Illusion
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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.
-William Blake
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Imagination
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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?
-William Blake
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What is now proved was only once imagined.
-William Blake
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To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
First published by Rossetti in Gilchrist's Life of William Blake (1863), it was composed between 1800 - 1803 http://www.artofeurope.com/blake/bla3.htm
-William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
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Innocence
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Every harlot was a virgin once.
-William Blake
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Intelligence
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The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
-William Blake
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Joy, Excitement
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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.
-William Blake
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Laziness
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Expect poison from standing water.
-William Blake
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Liberty
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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.
-William Blake
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Life
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For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.
-William Blake
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Books by and about William Blake