Quotes About Inspiration

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it.

It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. They impress us with the conviction, that one nature wrote and the same reads.

For it is a fire that kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its generous flames.

An idea lights a thousand candles.

Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

The best rule of reading will be a method from nature, and not a mechanical one of hours and pages.

for the hand can never execute any thing higher than the character can inspire.

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all parts, that is, the poet.

What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: The conduct of life . (Ams Pr Inc June 2004) Originally published 1841.

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

Build therefore your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.

There are books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

Follow the quiet voice within you that is telling you where to go.

So when the soul of the poet has come to ripeness of thought, she detaches and sends away from it its poems or songs,—a fearless, sleepless, deathless progeny, which is not exposed to the accidents of the weary kingdom of time: a fearless, vivacious offspring, clad with wings (such was the virtue of the soul out of which they came), which carry them fast and far, and infix them irrecoverably into the hearts of men. These wings are the beauty of the poet's soul.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.

De multe ori, viitorul unui om a depins de lectura unei c?r?i.

Poets are thus liberating gods.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

In a certain state of thought is the common origin of very diverse works. It is the spirit and not the fact that is identical.