William Blake

Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary — one of the most singular minds in the history of English literature.

William Blake lived in London from 1757 to 1827 and spent his life doing things nobody else was doing. He wrote poetry and illustrated it himself, engraving the plates, printing the pages, and hand-colouring the results — producing books that were works of art before you read a word. He saw angels in trees as a child and never entirely stopped. He believed imagination was not decoration but the primary force of human life.

His work sits at the edge of the Romantic movement but doesn't quite belong to it — too mystical, too visionary, too committed to his own private mythology. His two great collections, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, map the gap between the world as we wish it were and the world as it is. The gap hasn't closed.

Blake's quotes carry a quality of compressed fire — lines that feel like they were written at high temperature and haven't cooled yet. For the dreamers, the visionaries, and the people who refuse to see the ceiling.