“Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache; do be my enemy for friendship's sake.”
“I have no name: I am but two days old. What shall I call thee? I happy am, Joy is my name. Sweet joy befall thee!”
“Embraces are cominglings from the head even to the feet, and not a pompous high priest entering by a secret place.”
“The generations of men run on in the tide of time, but leave their destined lineaments permanent for ever and ever.”
“''I have no name:'' I am but two days old. ''What shall I call thee?'' I happy am, ''Joy is my name.'' sweet joy befall thee!”
“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.”
“All futurity seems teeming with endless destruction never to be repelled; Desperate remorse swallows the present in a quenchless rage.”
“You smile with pomp and rigor, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue and get murdered time after time.”
“It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only.”
“The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose.”
“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru chinks of his cavern.”
“Then my verse I dishonor, my pictures despise, my person degrade and my temper chastise; and the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame; and my talents I bury, and dead is my fame.”
“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.”
“What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.”
“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.”
“''When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?'' O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying ''Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.''”
“The inquiry in England is not whether a man has talents and genius, but whether he is passive and polite and a virtuous ass and obedient to noblemen's opinions in art and science. If he is, he is a good man. If not, he must be starved.”
“I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes.”
“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.”
“Thinking as I do that the Creator of this world is a very cruel being, and being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: ''the Son, O how unlike the Father!'' First God Almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it.”
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”
“Nature in darkness groans and men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night: restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words of stern philosophy and knead the bread of knowledge with tears and groans.”
“I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.”
“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.”
“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?”
“When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.”