William Blake was a renowned poet and print-maker from Britain. The London-born artist produced some of the greatest engravings of all time such as the Illustrations of the Book of Job. Here we bring to you interesting pieces of tidbits from the life of this famous artist. Blake recognized his calling since an early age and his parents were supportive of him. They sent Blake to Henry Pars’s Drawing School in London for formal training when William was only ten.
After drawing school, Blake apprenticed with James Basire, who taught him the ropes of engraving.
When he started out as a professional engraver, Blake would engrave copies of other artists work but eventually he progressed to developing his own designs.
While he spent most of his life in obscurity, Blake's engravings are now considered as prized possessions and are valued in millions. Not many know but Blake was also a mystic who experienced visions on several occasions. He once envisioned God “put his head to the window” and in another of his visions he saw his deceased brother’s “released spirit ascend heavenward through the matter-of-fact ceiling, ‘clapping its hands for joy.’”
In the segment below we bring to you inspirational quotes by the famous artist and poet William Blake.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
William Blake
Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
William Blake
What is now proved was once only imagined.
William Blake
The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.
William Blake
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.
William Blake
Man was made for joy and woe
Then when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul to bind.
For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death
Then am I
A happy fly
If I live
Or if I die
Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
William Blake
The Sick Rose
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.
William Blake
He who replies to words of doubt
doth put the light of knowledge out.
William Blake
Opposition is true Friendship.
William Blake
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
William Blake
Without contraries there is no progression.
William Blake
Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.
William Blake
How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?
William Blake
Dip him in the river who loves water.
William Blake
And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification
William Blake
Make your own rules or be a slave to another man's.
William Blake
The moon, like a flower in heaven's high bower, with silent delight sits and smiles on the night.
