"The weak in courage is strong in cunning"
About this Quote
Blake lands the line like a proverb with teeth: if you lack courage, you may compensate with strategy, misdirection, and survivalist intelligence. “Weak in courage” isn’t just timidity; it’s a moral and spiritual deficit in Blake’s universe, where boldness often signals imaginative freedom. “Strong in cunning” carries a faintly sulfurous smell. Cunning is not wisdom here; it’s the cleverness of the trapped, the resentful, the institutionally protected - the kind of intelligence that thrives when open confrontation is too costly.
The intent is diagnostic, not consoling. Blake isn’t praising the underdog’s resourcefulness so much as exposing a mechanism by which fear reproduces itself. When people can’t act plainly, they act obliquely. They negotiate, flatter, manipulate, and scheme. Cunning becomes a substitute for courage, but also a temptation: it can feel like power while keeping you safely out of danger. That’s the subtextual sting. Cowardice doesn’t always look like retreat; it can look like shrewdness, like “playing the game,” like plausible deniability.
Context matters: Blake wrote in an England of sharpening class divisions, political repression after the French Revolution, and a booming culture of respectability. In that world, direct moral speech could be punished or marginalized, while bureaucratic and social cunning could be rewarded. The line reads as a brief against the age’s polished evasions: when bravery is scarce, guile becomes a civic language. Blake’s genius is how quickly he makes that sound less like a skill and more like a symptom.
The intent is diagnostic, not consoling. Blake isn’t praising the underdog’s resourcefulness so much as exposing a mechanism by which fear reproduces itself. When people can’t act plainly, they act obliquely. They negotiate, flatter, manipulate, and scheme. Cunning becomes a substitute for courage, but also a temptation: it can feel like power while keeping you safely out of danger. That’s the subtextual sting. Cowardice doesn’t always look like retreat; it can look like shrewdness, like “playing the game,” like plausible deniability.
Context matters: Blake wrote in an England of sharpening class divisions, political repression after the French Revolution, and a booming culture of respectability. In that world, direct moral speech could be punished or marginalized, while bureaucratic and social cunning could be rewarded. The line reads as a brief against the age’s polished evasions: when bravery is scarce, guile becomes a civic language. Blake’s genius is how quickly he makes that sound less like a skill and more like a symptom.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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