Quotes About Inspiration

Genius moves to creation, not to destruction. Only a very few have combined both.

None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

The American classicist Edith Hamilton once described the great works of literature, the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.

Very few great artists feel the giant agony of the world.

Edith Hamilton

He is happy whom the Muses love. For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. Such

Not his match! And have you not the heart in you to be anything but best? How many are his match? How many in this world do you think stand in the front rank? Are all the rest of us to give up and sit on our hands rather than serve humbly where we deserve?

I even wrote a white-bear poem. It began Ghost bear wanders, always alone; king of the north, dispensing death from his traveling throne. It was shortly after this effort that I decided I wouldn't be a poet after all.

Poetry is the deification of reality.

Once while Edith was visiting the cathedral of Frankfurt, a woman with a market basket entered and knelt down in one of the pews to pray briefly. This was something entirely new to her, leaving as deep an impression as the university lectures.

Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.

True originality consists not in a new manner, but in a new vision.

Two ways to be a light for all, is to be a flaming candle or the mirror that reflects it

There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level, and surveys the long windings of destiny.

I cannot picture what the life of the spirit would have been without him. He found me when my mind and soul were hungry and thirsty, and he fed them till our last hour together. It is such comradeships, made of seeing and dreaming, and thinking and laughing together, that make one feel that for those who have shared them there can be no parting.

You are an artist and I happen to be the bit of colour you are using today. It's a part of your cleverness to be able to produce premeditated effects extemporaneously.

You are an artist and I happen to be the bit of color you are using today.

It is surprising how little narrow walls and a low ceiling matter, when the roof of the soul has suddenly been raised.

The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of poverty.

She wanted to surprise everyone by her dash and originality, but she could not help modeling herself on the last person she met, and the confusion of ideals thus produced caused her much perturbation when she had to choose between two courses.

La lectura debería ser un acto de creación, como el escribir.

Norton was supremely gifted as an awakener, and no thoughtful mind can recall without a thrill the notes of the first voice which has called it out of its morning dream.

It seems so to me, said his wife, as if she were producing a new thought.