INSPIRATION

Related Subjects: Art, Genius, Skill

1. 'Tis inspiration expounds experience.—PHILIP J. BAILEY, Festus
   

2. My themes come to me in a flash. They are intuitive. Long after their arrival I take them up and work very hard over them.—BRAHMS, Schauffler: The Unknown Brahms
   

3. No man was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.—CICERO, De Natura Deorum
   

4. Fill'd with fury, rapt, inspired.—WILLIAM COLLINS, The Passions
   

5. The text inspires not them, but they the text inspire.—DRYDEN, The Medal
   

6. We cannot carry on inspiration and make it consecutive. One day there is no electricity in the air, and the next the world bristles with sparks like a cat's back.—EMERSON, Lectures
   

7. Poet greets Inspiration with a curse: "I will be damned," cries he, "if I write verse."—GILBERT FRANKAU
   

8. Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two—or at the most, three—come as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come. Therefore the composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself. What he substitutes for it is nothing more than talent plus his knowledge. If his endowment is great enough, the song is made to sound as if it were truly inspired.—GEORGE GERSHWIN

9. If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition for the requisite receptivity.—WILLIAM JAMES, Varieties of Religious Experience
   

10. If there be good in that I wrought,
    Thy hand compelled it, Master, Thine—
    Where I have failed to meet Thy Thought
    I know, through Thee, the blame was mine.—KIPLING, My New-Cut Ashlar
    

11. Earth's fiery core alone can feed the bough
    That blooms between Orion and the Plough.—EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, Sonnet
    

12. O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
    The brightest heaven of invention!—SHAKESPEARE, Henry V
    

13. Spirits are not finely touch'd But to fine issues.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merry Wives of Windsor
    

14. No more inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins.—BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman
    

15. All around him Patmos lies
    Who hath spirit-gifted eyes.—EDITH M. THOMAS, Patmos
    

16. Who with one breath attunes the spheres,
    And also my poor human heart.—THOREAU, Inspiration
    

17. It seems to me that this one [one of Mary Baker Eddy's revisions of the Lord's Prayer] is distinctly superior to the one that was inspired for last year's edition. It is strange, but to my mind plain, that inspiring is an art which does improve with  practice.—MARK TWAIN, Christian Science
    

18. Great God! I'd rather be
    A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
    So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
    Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
    Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
    Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.—WORDSWORTH, The World Is Too Much With Us

19. There's not a man
    That lives who bath not known his godlike hours.—WORDSWORTH, The Prelude