Quotes About Inspiration

And in this it is right, for the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what, having prayed for, we fear that we may receive.

There is nothing that art cannot express

In the cave of black Despair: He only looked upon the sun, And drank the morning air.

We should remember that all the arts are fine arts and all the arts decorative arts.

The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

the poet must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn turn to gold at the harvest-time, and the moon in her ordered wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield.

Um sonhador é aquele que só consegue encontrar o seu caminho ao luar e que, por castigo, vê o alvorecer antes do resto do mundo.

And when he roared into your driveway at night, you knew he was bringing music, whether you wanted it or not.

Everything is moved by love.

The people need poetry that will be their own secret To keep them awake forever, And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.

Destroy your manuscript, but save whatever you have inscribed in the margin out of boredom, out of helplessness, and, as it were, in a dream. (The Egyptian Stamp)

Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.

Ever since they left Thies, the women had not stopped singing. As soon as one group allowed the refrain to die, another picked it up, and new verses were born at the hazard of chance or inspiration, one word leading to another and each finding, in its turn, its rhythm and its place. No one was very sure any longer where the song began, or if it had an ending. It rolled out over its own length, like the movement of a serpent. It was as long as a life.

Grandfather, I know now what it is that washes the water. It is the spirit. The water is clear and pure, but the spirit is purer still.

or that writing a poem you can read to no one is like dancing in the dark.

Poetry comes fine spun from a mind at peace.

For such a career I lacked both endurance and inclination: the stress of ambition left me cold, while the Muse, the creative spirit, was forever urging on me that haven of leisure to which I'd always leaned. The poets of those days I cultivated and cherished: for me, bards were so many gods.

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn.

All other creatures look down toward the earth, but man was given a face so that might turn his eyes toward the stars and his gaze upon the sky.

the gods are created by poets --Ovid

My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed into new bodies: O gods above, inspire this undertaking (which you've changed as well) and guide my poem in its epic sweep from the world's beginning to the present day. The

and I will reach the stars with the crown of my head

Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua. — Venus & Adonis, May 1593