Before passing from the literary to the artistic expression of Blake’s genius in these books, something must be said of the remarkable appendix to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell entitled Proverbs of Hell. These are a number of aphoristic sayings, impregnated with Blake’s peculiarities of thought and expression, but for the most part so shrewd and pithy as to demonstrate the author’s sanity, at least at this time of his life. The following are some of the more striking:—
Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
He who has suffered you to impose on him, knows you.