MEMORABLE LINES

There are as many ways to study Blake as there are to study any complex subject. To start a study of any subject an entry point must be found through something that is familiar and relatively simple. Many  people find that Songs of Innocence & Experience offers an introduction which stimulates their interest. Another point of entry may be to become  familiar with some of Blake's succinct and striking statements which represent the thought he develops and expands throughout his lifetime.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
www.metmuseum.org
Adam and the Beasts, Illustration from Hayley's Ballads

Words and ideas may gradually  become familiar and find a lodging place in our minds. Then they may  begin their work of altering the ingrained habits of thought that prevent us from creating that new heaven of imagination which Blake so longed for and so worked for.  

Memorable Lines 

1.
"He who would see the Divinity must see him in his Children
One first, in friendship & love; then a Divine Family, & in the midst
Jesus will appear; so he who wishes to see a Vision; a perfect Whole        
Must see it in its Minute Particulars"

2.
"Friendship cannot exist without Forgiveness of Sins continually"

3.
"A Last Judgment is not for the purpose of making Bad
Men better but for the Purpose of hindering them from opressing
the Good with Poverty & Pain by means of Such Vile Arguments &
Insinuations"

4.
"What are all the Gifts of the
Spirit but Mental Gifts whenever any Individual Rejects Error &
Embraces Truth a Last Judgment passes upon that Individual" 

5.
"Error is
Created Truth is Eternal Error or Creation will be Burned Up &
then & not till then Truth or Eternity will appear It is Burnt up
the Moment Men cease to behold it"  

6.
"I care not whether a Man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise Man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness    
And put on Intellect:"

7.
"Holiness is not The Price of Enterance into Heaven Those
who are cast out Are All Those who having no Passions of their
own because No Intellect.  Have spent their lives in Curbing &
Governing other Peoples by the Various arts of Poverty & Cruelty
of all kinds" 

8.
"All Life consists of these Two Throwing off Error continually 

& recieving Truth Continually."

9.
"Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is
a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets
of Soul in this age"

10.
"These the Visions of Eternity 
But we see only as it were the hem of their garments
When with our vegetable eyes we view these wond'rous Visions"

11.
"For God himself enters Death's Door always with those that enter 
And lays down in the Grave with them, in Visions of Eternity
Till they awake & see Jesus & the Linen Clothes lying
That the Females had Woven for them, & the Gates of their Fathers House"

12.
"I pretend not to holiness! yet I pretend to love,
to see, to converse with daily, as man with man, & the more to
have an interest in the Friend of Sinners."