Quotes About Inspiration

A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.

all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that, Socrates, is the reason for all his earlier labors

And yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route.

The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs.

the creative soul creates not children, but conceptions of wisdom and virtue

For the plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins.

Even the best of writings are but a reminiscence of what we know...

as a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there and setting him all aflutter, it waters the passages of the feathers and causes the wings to grow, and fills the soul of the loved one in his turn with love.

Now I am a diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my own use, as you might say of a bad writer—his writing is good enough for him; and

Today Learner is Tomorrow Leader

If a painter, then, paints a picture of an ideally beautiful man, complete to the last detail, is he any the worse painter because he cannot show that such a man could really exist?

the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.

Some say there are nine Muses. Count again. Behold the tenth: Sappho of Lesbos.

I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.

Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

Yes, if he is to have true music in him.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Sinceramente? Èpico.

For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet

Philosophy begins in wonder. -Plato

So we would be right to say the seers and prophets just mentioned are 'divine' and 'inspired' – likewise, everyone with a knack for poetry. Likewise, politicians and public figures are nothing less than divine and possessed when – under some god's inspiration and influence – they give speeches that lead to success in important matters, even they have no idea what they are talking about. – Quite so.

For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed.

Mais on ne saurait mieux le faire qu'avec une