“I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.”

— William Blake , A Poison Tree

A Poison Tree, st. 1
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 18, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did …" by William Blake?

William Blake 249

English Romantic poet and artist 1757–1827

Related quotes

“My "act" has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act.”

Yukio Mishima book Confessions of a Mask

Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 153.
Context: My "act" has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act. My knowledge that I am masquerading as a normal person has even corroded whatever of normality I originally possessed, ending by making me tell myself over and over again that it too was nothing but a pretense of normality. To say it another way, I'm becoming the sort of person who can't believe in anything except the counterfeit.

“I wasn't even allowed time to say goodbye to my friends, I was just told to pack. I was given one last night with my family.”

Kim Hyon-hui (1962) former North Korean agent

"Exclusive: My life as a North Korean super spy" in ABC News (Australia) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-10/my-life-as-a-north-korean-super-spy3a-exclusive/4621358 (10 April 2013)

“I always thought I wanted to play professionally, and I always knew that to do that I'd have to make a lot of sacrifices. I made sacrifices by leaving Argentina, leaving my family to start a new life. I changed my friends, my people. Everything. But everything I did, I did for football, to achieve my dream.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

“I am not old, — I cannot be old,
Though threescore years and ten
Have wasted away, like a tale that is told,
The lives of other men:

I am not old ; though friends and foes
Alike have gone to their graves,
And left me alone to my joys or my woes,
As a rock in the midst of the waves.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

The Song of Seventy.
A Thousand Lines (1846)

“Alone am I, and alone I wish to be;
Alone my sweet love has left me.
Alone am I, without friend or mate,
Alone am I, mournful and angry.”

Christine de Pizan (1365–1430) Italian French late medieval author

Seulete suy et seulete vueil estre,
Seulete m'a mon doulz ami laissiée,
Seulete suy, sanz compaignon ne maistre,
Seulette suy, dolente et courrouciée.
Cent Balades, no. 11, line 1; Maurice Roy (ed.) Œuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan (1886) vol. 1, p. 12. Translation from Aliki Barnstone & Willis Barnstone (eds.) A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now (1980) p. 203.

“I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“I didn't think my day could get any worse until my best friend told me she might be going crazy. Again.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

“my candle burns at both ends it will not last the night but arh my friends and oh my foes it gives a lovely light”

Roald Dahl book Boy

Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920); said to be a motto Roald Dahl lived by.
Misattributed
Variant: My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light.
Source: Boy: Tales of Childhood

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay book A Few Figs from Thistles

Misattributed
Source: Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920); said to be a motto Roald Dahl lived by.

“I want to finish work on my mother's juvenile (Farmer Boy manuscript) by the end of June. There's a curious half-angry reluctance in my writing for other people. I say to myself that whatever earnings there may be are all in the family. Also I seize upon this task as an excuse to postpone my own work.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Diary (May 29, 1933).

“I was angry with my friend:I told my wrath, my wrath did end.I was angry with my foe:I told it not, my wrath did grow.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

William Blake 249

Related quotes

Related topics

“I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.”