“The standardized curricular education requires results each day, each week, surely each month, with an accumulated measurable outcome at the end of each semester; creative education thinks in terms of years and even in spans of years.”

Measuring growth slowly rather than by weekly yield · Book, Creative Power

• Creativity
• Education
• Time

“The creative school cares not how inept and slovenly a lad may be the whole term, if it sees something personal and fine taking slow possession of him.”

Patience with awkward beginnings if a personal voice is taking shape · Book, Creative Power

• Creativity
• Education
• Growth

“I possess my visions and peace.”

Inner possession is claimed against the pity of prosperous visitors · Conversation recorded by Henry Crabb Robinson

• Contentment
• Peace
• Vision

“I live in a hole here, but God has a beautiful mansion for me elsewhere.”

Poverty of rooms is set against amplitude of vision · Conversation recorded by Henry Crabb Robinson

• Faith
• Hope
• Poverty

“That is a horrible doctrine; if another man pay your debt I do not forgive it.”

Forgiveness cannot be hired out to a substitute victim · Conversation recorded by Henry Crabb Robinson, on vicarious atonement

• Forgiveness
• Justice
• Religion

“We are all co-existent with God — members of the Divine body. We are all partakers of the Divine nature.”

Human life is spoken of as already inside the divine, not approaching it from outside · Conversation recorded by Henry Crabb Robinson

• Gods
• Humanity
• Spirituality

“He is the only God. And so am I and so are you.”

Christ's divinity is affirmed and then extended to every human being · Conversation recorded by Henry Crabb Robinson, 10 December 1825

• Gods
• Humanity
• Religion

“Where any view of Money exists Art cannot be carried on, but War only.”

Commerce and conflict are paired as enemies of making · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Art
• Money
• War

“If Morality was Christianity Socrates was the Saviour.”

Ethics alone cannot stand in for the living faith Blake meant by Christianity · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Morality
• Philosophy
• Religion

“Jesus & his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists.”

The gospel circle is claimed as a company of makers · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Artists
• Imagination
• Religion

“Without Unceasing Practise nothing can be done. Practise is Art. If you leave off you are Lost.”

Art is a daily keeping, not a gift that survives neglect · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Art
• Discipline
• Practice

“Art is the Tree of Life. Science is the Tree of Death.”

A stark pairing of living image against a knowledge that kills vision · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Art
• Life
• Science

“The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is God himself.”

Imagination is named as the divine body shared by humankind · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Gods
• Humanity
• Imagination

“Prayer is the Study of Art. Praise is the Practise of Art.”

Devotion and making are treated as one discipline · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Art
• Practice
• Spirituality

“Christianity is Art & not Money. Money is its Curse.”

Faith is identified with creative life and opposed to cash as its blight · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Art
• Money
• Religion

“The Old & New Testaments are the Great Code of Art.”

Scripture is read as a grammar of making, not only of doctrine · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Art
• Literature
• Religion

“No man of sense ever supposes that copying from nature is the art of painting; if the art is no more than this, it is no better than any other manual labour.”

Art is invention of mind, not a trade of likeness · Public Address, notebook, c. 1810

• Art
• Imagination
• Nature

“Let it no more be said that empires encourage arts, for it is arts that encourage empires.”

Culture is the parent of power, not its hired servant · Public Address, notebook, c. 1810

• Art
• Civilization
• Power

“When I tell any Truth it is not for the sake of Convincing those who do not know it but for the sake of defending those who Do.”

Truth-telling is solidarity with the already seeing, not a conversion campaign · Public Address, notebook, c. 1810

• Conviction
• Speech
• Truth

“This world of Imagination is the World of Eternity; it is the divine bosom into which we shall go after the death of the Vegetated body.”

Imagination is not a holiday from life but the lasting country · A Vision of the Last Judgment

• Death
• Eternity
• Imagination

“Mental Things are alone Real; what is call'd Corporeal, Nobody Knows of its Dwelling Place: it is in Fallacy & its Existence an Imposture.”

Matter is demoted from substance to a misleading appearance · A Vision of the Last Judgment

• Mind
• Philosophy
• Reality

“Error is Created. Truth is Eternal. Error or Creation will be Burned Up & then & not till then Truth or Eternity will appear.”

Falsehood is perishable manufacture; truth does not need inventing · A Vision of the Last Judgment

• Error
• Eternity
• Truth

“I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro it & not with it.”

The eye is a pane of glass, not the seer · A Vision of the Last Judgment

• Mind
• Perception
• Vision

“What, it will be Question'd, When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk 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 guinea-sun of common sense is refused for a visionary dawn · A Vision of the Last Judgment

• Imagination
• Perception
• Vision