“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.”

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 photo
William Blake 249
English Romantic poet and artist 1757–1827

Related quotes

Yukio Mishima photo

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

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.

Kim Hyon-hui photo

“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)

Lionel Messi photo
Martin Farquhar Tupper photo
Christine de Pizan photo

“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.

Henry David Thoreau photo
Richelle Mead photo
Roald Dahl photo

“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”

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay photo

“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.”

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.

Rose Wilder Lane photo

Related topics