Henry Eliot shares a list of Blake’s proverbs

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake imagined walking among the inspirational fires of Hell, “delighted with the enjoyments of Genius”. He discourses with angels and devils and collects various local proverbs to illustrate “the nature of infernal wisdom”. Here is a small selection:

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

The cut worm forgives the plow.

Dip him in the river who loves water. 

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. 

Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.

The fox condemns the trap, not the man himself. 

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

What is now proved was once only imagin’d.

The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.

One thought fills immensity.

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. 

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

Listen to the fool’s reproach! It is a kingly title!

The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall row; nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.

When thou sees an Eagle, thou sees a portion of Genius; lift up thy head!

To create a little flower is the labour of the ages.

The crow wish’d every thing was black; the owl that every thing was white. 

Exuberance is Beauty.

Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius. 

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not to be believ’d. 

Enough! or Too much.

This extract is from Henry Eliot’s Book of Bookish Lists.

Henry Eliot is an Idler Academy tutor whose courses include An Introduction to Medieval English Literature and The Life and Works of Charles Dickens Series One, Two, and Three. Take a look at the Idler Academy here.

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