Creativity Quotes

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Ideas are the very coinage of your brain.”

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”

“Write till your ink be dry, and with your tearsMoist it again, and frame some feeling lineThat may discover such integrity.”

“This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.”

“By heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be mekancholy.”

“So full of shapes is fancy That it alone is high fantastical.”

“The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth,From earth to heaven.”

“so full of shapes is fancy”

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations; like a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white sugar.”

“Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.”

“Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange, extravagant and broken the monotony.”

“Life too near paralyses art.”

“In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.”

“All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.”

“The poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low that the common influences should delight him.”

“There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law.”

“Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.”

“Every man is a new method.”

“Genius Borrows nobly.”

“A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection.”

“The reward of commercial civilization is the ability to consume a never-ending array of products.There are limits beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without preventing their consumers from affirming themselves through the exercise of their personal freedom.When market dependence reaches a certain threshold it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is expressed with difficulty.”

“We do not yet trust the unknown powers of thought. Whence came all these tools, inventions, book laws, parties, kingdoms? Out of the invisible world, through a few brains. The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns.”

“Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years.”