Everybody Does Not See Alike
Fun I love,
but too much fun
is of all things the most loathsome.
Mirth is better than fun,
and happiness is better than mirth.
I feel that a man may be happy in this world.
and I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision.
I see everything that I paint in this world,
but everybody does not see alike.
To the eyes of a miser
a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun,
and a bag worn with the use of money
has more beautiful proportions
than a vine filled with grapes.
The tree which moves some to tears of joy
is in the eyes of others
only a green thing which stands in the way.
Some see nature all ridicule and deformity,
and by these I shall not regulate my proportions;
and some scarce see nature at all.
But to the eyes of the man of imagination,
nature is imagination itself.
As a man is, so he sees.
— William Blake, a letter to his patron
The Rev. John Trusler, August 23, 1799
