Quotes About Inspiration

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation.

Never lose an opportunity for seeing something beautiful for beauty is God s handwriting.

Books are for nothing but to inspire

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long.

Words are finite organs of the infinite mind.

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

A man's library is a sort of harem.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth whispers, 'I can.

The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.

I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.

A sufficient and sure method of civilization is in the influence of good women.

Every word was once a poem.

To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Our best thoughts come from others.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startles out wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.