Life & Wisdom Quote by William Blake

Blake doesn’t flatter the reader with “open-mindedness”; he indicts the entire sensory and moral apparatus that passes for it. “Doors of perception” sounds quaint until you remember what a door does: it frames, filters, and keeps things out. Blake’s line isn’t a hippie invitation to see prettier colors. It’s a theological and political dare to admit that what we call reality is a managed interior space, furnished by habit, fear, and the social order.

The genius is in the conditional: “If ... were cleansed.” Perception isn’t expanded by piling on information but purified by stripping away grime - the soot of convention, the deadening of repetition, the inherited categories that turn the world into an inventory. Blake’s “cleansed” also carries the sting of repentance. The problem isn’t ignorance; it’s spiritual cataract. That makes the next turn land harder: “everything would appear ... as it is, infinite.” Not “seem larger,” not “feel meaningful,” but “as it is.” Infinity isn’t a metaphor here; it’s the baseline that our narrowed consciousness refuses to register.

Context matters: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is Blake’s provocation against Enlightenment rationalism and the respectable morality that came with it. He’s attacking the false sobriety of a culture that equates measurable with real and calls its own limitations “reason.” The subtext is radical: cleanse perception and you don’t escape the world - you see through the world’s official story, and that threatens every institution built on keeping vision small.