top of page

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 mediately to the understanding or reason?

William Blake, English poet, painter, engraver

1757-1827

Letter, 23 Aug. 1799 (published in Complete Writings, ed. by Geoffrey Keynes, 1957)

bottom of page