Quotes About Inspiration

My mother had to abandon the quest, but managed to extract from the restriction itself a further refinement of thought, as great poets do when the tyranny of rhyme forces them into the discovery of their finest lines.

All the great writers are like that: the beauty of their sentences, like the beauty of a woman one has not yet met, is unforeseeable...

Since we possess its hymn, engraved on our hearts in its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines, potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for us to remember all that follows.

Like an inspired and prolific poet, who never refuses to spread beauty to the humblest places, which until now did not seem to share the domain of art, the sun still warmed the bountiful energy of the dung heap, of the unevenly paved yard, and of the pear tree worn down like an old serving maid.

Notre sagesse commence où celle de l'auteur finit, nous voudrions qu'il nous donnât des réponses, quand tout ce qu'il peut faire est de nous donner des désirs.

Even the demons are encouraged when their chief is not lost in loss itself.

A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit?

And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.

Many a man lives a burden to the Earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

Their rising all at once was as the sound Of thunder heard remote.

I thence invoke my thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, That wash thy hallowed feet and warbling flow, Nightly I visit.

The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.

Th' invention all admir'd, and each, how hee   To be th' inventer miss'd, so easie it seemd   Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought   Impossible: yet haply of thy Race   In future dayes, if Malice should abound,   Some one intent on mischief, or inspir'd   With dev'lish machination might devise   Like instrument to plague the Sons of men   For sin, on warr and mutual slaughter bent.

I was all ear, And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of Death.

This and the following Psalm were don by the Author at fifteen yeers old.

but to create Is greater than created to destroy.

Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.

For saddies, encouragement is revelatory. Rather than making their resolve stronger, it will implant a resolve where none had been. "Because this person believes in me," the saddie thinks, "and this person is not me, they may have a point.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness.

Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing

One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made; that this is still the morning of creation; that mountains long conceived are now being born, channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollowed for lakes...