Quotes About Inspiration

I will stay very little while, for as I am in a train of writing now I fear to disturb it—let it have its course bad or good ...

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd. So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet From swinged censer teeming; Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: - Ode to Psyche - Excerpt

I feel confident I should have been a rebel Angel had the opportunity been mine.

Shakespeare permeated his whole being, and his influence is to be detected not in a resemblance of style, for Shakespeare can have no imitators, but in a broadening view of life, and increased humanity.

A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune, And still it cried, 'Apollo! young Apollo! The morning-bright Apollo! young Apollo!

Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.

Oh, sweet Fancy! Let her loose; Everything is spoilt by use (...) Let the winged Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home

yet I must not forget Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet: For what there may be worthy in these rhymes I partly owe to him:

I'll tell you how to burn

On the green of the hill We will drink our fill Of golden sunshine, Till our brains intertwine With the glory and grace of Apollo!

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse! O first-born on the mountains! by the hues Of heaven on the spiritual air begot: Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot, While yet our England was a wolfish den;

Then sang forth the Nine, Apollo's garland:–yet didst thou divine Such home-bred glory, that they cry'd in vain, "Come hither, Sister of the Island!

I'll feel my heaven anew

You see how I go on—like so many strokes of a hammer. I cannot help it—I am impell'd, driven to it.

For what has made the sage or poet write but the fair paradise of Nature's light?

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact'ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain … When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be

De nada tengo certeza sino de la santidad de los afectos del corazón y de la verdad de la imaginación.

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.

Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs.

When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occassional cheese dip. ? John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

And who knows? Those people might have much better things to do than to loiter about Levy Pants, such as composing jazz or creating new dances or doing whatever those things are that they do with such facility.

When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.

Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice. And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.

To proclaim the need for new ideas has served, in some measure, as a substitute for them.